NikeLab x Rousteing: Fashionable Innovation of the Beautiful Game

NikeLab’s innovations meets Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing has got us hot under the collar. It is a collaboration that promises to bond the beautiful game to the beautiful design in a fashionable manner.

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The NikeLab x Olivier Rousteing relationship begun over a year ago and is the second collaboration in NikeLab’s Summer of Sport series. Launching 2nd June 2016, the partnership promises to deliver the kind of high-end sports meets fashion that will get the fashion industry’s tongues wagging.

Blending fashion and sports, the NikeLab x Olivier Rousteing partnership is not a fashion first for Nike. The sportswear giant has also collaborated with fashion designers the likes of Riccardo Tisci and Chitose Abe of Japanese label Sacai. As for Rousteing, he is no collab virgin either. People are still talking about the Balmain x H&M collaboration that we tech styled back in October 2015. It was the high street brand’s most popular collab, it got even more attention than Alexandra Wang x H&M!

premier-apercu-de-la-collection-nikelab-xCreating a new take on Nike’s most iconic football silhouettes, Rousteing’s vision of gold, black and embroidery has been successfully translated into “Football Nouveau”. Pushing the sports aesthetic forward, the designer confessed, that his elaborate vision of the collection was based on the Nike athlete. He shared, “Fashion is usually about the catwalk and the glamour, but with Nike it was about performance and the athletes. What I love about this collection is that we are integrating the iconic style of football into sport style.”

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On his re-imagined modern silhouettes and luxury finishes Jarrett Reynolds, NikeLab Senior Apparel Design Director added, “Olivier was obsessed with the complete look, making sure each piece worked together – not just within the men’s and women’s collections, but also between the two. At every design review, he’d ask, ‘Would a football player really wear that?’ That question helped keep the collection rooted in the sport.”

Rousteing has also interpreted a few of Nike’s existing trainer styles; including high-tech woven material with embroidered patterns. On the finished end product NikeLab Senior Footwear Innovation Design Director Nate Jobe shared, “Olivier is meticulous about the details, with a passion for finding clever ways to embellish existing structures. This obsession with finishing manifests itself especially well in the Magista and the Mercurial. In each model, we’ve embroidered patterns into the Flyknit for the first time, which creates a completely new expression of the technology.”

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With fashion bible Vogue calling the collection “a felicitous marriage of Nike’s technically advanced materials with Rousteing’s love of dark glamour”, we must admit that Rousteing’s designs have got our attention, but now we wait with baited breath for Nike to share with us the tech innovation behind their Football Nouveau collection.

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