Football Reimagined with Nike x Kim Jones

Ahead of the start of the FIFA World Cup, Kim Jones, former style director of Louis Vuitton and current artistic director of Dior Homme, has collaborated with Nike to create “Football Reimagined”. This is the second current collaboration that Nike is delivering with a designer that has heavy streetwear influences, the other of which is Virgil Abloh, founder of Off-White and current creative director of Louis Vuitton.

Inspired by the fusion, do it yourself style and attitude of the British punk era, Jones has created an almost all black collection that consists of a hybrid sneaker, shorts, jerseys, track pants. The punk influence is most clear in the jerseys which show evidence of the “cutting up and putting things back together,” as Jones explains.  A common motif in the collection is, obviously, the Nike swoosh in an iridescent silver colour and the number eleven, which is placed above the swoosh and is present on both the chest and back of the jerseys. The sneaker is a combination of The Footscape, the Vandal and the Air Max 97, three of Jones’ favourite Nike shoes fitted to the shape of the Mercurial. The designer has explained this amalgamation as “an homage to punk” of the 1970’s and 1980’s London.

The thought behind the “Football Reimagined” collaboration collection is explained by Jones as acknowledging and celebrating the “unity of the game… the love of the team, it’s the element of feeling like as one as a group of people” and the positivity of “how it just gives people an opportunity to change their lives and do different things.” The collection appears to be bringing punk into 21st-century streetwear and serves to recognize technology in a contemporary context. Both the Nike x Kim Jones “Football Reimagined” and Nike x Off-White  “Football mon amour” will be released in June.