STREEThing

Nike NSW is set to launch on 080808 (8th August 2008), we spoke to Nike Global Design Director Jesse Leyva recently on the upcoming Fall’08 NSW sneakers collection

Hey Jesse, we are excited to be here to witness to launch of NSW. Knowing you played an important role in designing team for NSW sneakers range, what can we expect from NSW sneakers?

You will definitely see more fusion and innovation from the NSW range. The innovation would be coming in very different form, you will also see lots of Nike innovation as bunch of concepts rather than being just icons. It’s in our DNA that innovation drives the design approach first. And from that innovation come these new and exciting expressions of style. For Fall ’08, you get to see collection like the Air Force 1 Supreme Max Black Widow, AF1 Rasheed from the AF1 One World, Air Max 90 Current Infrared and many others.

We are looking at the 4 NSW iconic sneakers – Air Force 1, Dunk, Cortez and Air Max 90. Are we expecting more NSW icons in time to come?

Potentially yes but we are currently focusing on the 4 sneaker icons for now and you will get to see lots of fusion within these 4 iconic models in time to come.

Where did your team get most of their design Inspirations from?

For the Fall ’08 NSW sneakers range, we get a lot of inspirations from the athletes and Olympic. If you look at the AF1 Supreme Max Black Widow, while on a design inspiration trip to Beijing, our team was taken to the Bird’s Nest stadium and immediately all our cameras came out. We thought, what if we could create a structure that removes material from the upper, but maintains support and adds an innovative graphic element? And at the same time, back in Beaverton, Nike’s Innovation Kitchen was working on a material called Flywire that would provide suspension-bridge-like foot support through a system of lightweight, high-strength threads. The Bird’s Nest and Flywire are both designs that allow for the removal of materials by engineering exterior support structures. It was from these two sources of inspiration that the Air Force 1 Supreme Max Black Widow’s distinctive upper was born.

We know Nike always work with the influencers for designs, how does Nike work with the influencers from industry for NSW range?

In Nike, we always work with trade makers or influencers to get opinions out of just Nike design team. The trade makers actually provide value inputs for design that we don’t see. That’s why we value the influencers’ opinion so much. For example, we worked closely with our athlete Rasheed Wallace when designing the AF1 Max Supreme, his inputs are always valuable especially when he wears AF1 during games day in and day out. These are the inputs that make our products better.

Speaking of which, we are always curious about whether Rasheed Wallace’s AF1 is the same like any AF1 that is in production or he does get his game-shoes modified for maximum comfort?

Working with Rasheed, he is really old school and he just wanna keep his AF1 as it is. So yes, he is actually wearing the same AF1 that is available in stores without any modification whatsoever.

We take special interest in the new Air Max 90 Current in Infrared, can you tell us more about the design and the innovation applied on this model?

As for the Air Max 90 current, we just took an iconic product Air Max 90 to do it. Actually Tinker Hatfield was already thinking FREE sole back in 1990 but Nike didn’t have the technology back then. So now we thought If we could remove rubber to make it lighter. Refining it and making this legendary shoe even lighter, more comfortable, and more stable. Building on the same Nike Air platform Tinker created for the AM90, we designed the upper with the latest Flywire technology for lightweight stability and added a Nike Free outsole for optimized flexibility and traction. Every element has a purpose and makes the shoe better. The overall look of the Air Max 90 Current retains the integrity of the original AM 90, radiating from the iconic signature visible Air unit, but upon closer inspection, this new creation has all the markings of a Nike Sportswear product: It’s instantly recognizable as Air Max 90, but hybridized with the Air Current dynamic fit system and Free 5.0 technology to improve the function and feeling of the shoe. So it’s much lighter and more comfortable with silhouette of AM90.

It’s not easy to come out with new designs for the NSW range, what are the difficulties that your designers faced?

It’s definitely a challenge when there are already a hundred of colourway out there for the iconic models like AF1, Dunk, AM90 or Cortez. What’s more difficult for us is not to mess up the iconic models. That is why we need stay very focus in terms of keeping the design fresh yet practical and comfortable for the new sneakers range.

Eddie Cruz of UNDFTD is calling NSW – a new startup company within a conglomerate, what is your take on that?

He is right, we do have a small design group. It’s not like we don’t wanna have a bigger team but we just wanna keep it small so we get more focus and creative in terms of design. So yes, NSW is like a new startup team within Nike to keep the range focus and innovative.

We look forward to seeing more products from NSW very soon Thank you for your valuable time.

Thank you very much. Stay tune for more releases from NSW.

Stay Tune for NIKE NSW launch in your region comes August