As I like my classical business shoes and boots, I like to wear sneakers. And as I also like to wear them down quite drastically, I had to buy some new ones right before next weeks trip to Berlin fashion week. Hobo style is nice, but not the clothing I’d like to express myself through during business trips.
Most of the times I buy Adidas sneakers. Stan Smith, here we go. I like the simplistic yet not too casual form, the material, tone of white and how it fits my foot. Today I also wanted to try something new: a sneaker that’s more outgoing and stylish.
Naturally I checked what Adidas offered. But as I did not fell in love with anything on first sight, I started to check competitors.
Something I do a lot is to ask retailers “what’s your best selling product?”. The anecdotal, qualitative data helps me understanding what their business and their customers’ reality is about. In this large sneaker store it was the Nike Air Max.
So I looked at the shoe for quite a while.
How is this shoe working so well?
At first I thought that Nike’s approach to develop their probably most iconic design is so fundamentally different from mine. While I always try to reduce form, they’d cramp additional and useless elements into the product.
Why are they using so many lines and so many different colours? What kept them from reducing the amount of different materials employed? How can plastic be a good decision? Why is it so huge? I’d do it different!
Yet they are the most successful sneaker brand. I started to doubt everything I believe in design, and started to go nuts right in the shoe store because I did not understand why this works so well for them.
This design cannot be the best form for a sneaker.
So I bought them and tied my laces right there in the shop.
They suit my feet like flagships, and my heels are looking like they’d need these big love handles made out of plastic to stabilize me during walking.
Identity is a core function of fashion
For some hours I walked through the city, joined a friend as he wanted to check out an old car, went to the barber and did some grocery shopping. The sneakers were very comfortable. And as their dilemma was still haunting me, I even left them on while cooking.
I have some new neighbors and thought they’d like some, so I brought them two plates of my food downstairs.
“Nice Nikes”. I had noticed how people were casually checking out my sneakers during the day from time to time, but the way the neighbor said it to me just made it click.
Nike’s products stick out.
The function of a sneaker is not only being a shoe, but to extend identity and belonging. People recognize me as a Nike guy and potentially associate all the information attached to the brand with me. You pay to be part of their image. Obviously – that’s marketing.
Their design is still as reduced as it could be to serve that purpose. Obviously they could spare the uselessly added form elements and narrow down their choice of materials to the essentials. But than no one would recognize the sneaker as an Air Max.
So their wasteful design is basically screaming: “It’s a Nike shoe!”. Yeah, that does not suit my identity choices.
How I like it
Won’t return the shoes, as I’ve worn them already. I’ll use them as evidence for an interesting reflection process in the future. Also I’ve had them on while jogging back to the store to buy me a pair of Adidas Ultra Boosts.
Until today I’d not wear something employing shiny colors. Yet I appreciate Adidas’ Boost soles as one of the most underappreciated innovations in the whole apparel industry. It’s an unique material and they invested quite a lot to create something of such extraordinary quality.
With the shiny soles, they reduced the function of sticking out and brand identification to a bare modification of an already utilized and particularly special material. They did not just add useless elements. They even utilized their logotype in the design and did not just print it on. It’s a marvelous sneaker, and I did not realize that prior to my Air Max reflections.
Maybe I’m just an ‘Adidas guy’ that likes what is associated with this brand: not being mainstream, but still hip. And maybe this entire reflection is just a sophisticated way of my cognition tricking me in remaining loyal to a brand. But I’ve still learned something about design from it.