Now available at Nike.com, NikeLab stores and select specialty boutiques like Dover Street Market, is the eye-popping NikeLab x sacai capsule collection. NikeLab is the most fashion forward division of Nike, recreating its iconic sport pieces as streetwear. Fashion label, sacai, has been referencing and reinterpreting traditional sportswear the last few seasons with its own unique approach. The two were brought together by a shared passion for innovation and a bold expression of style resulting in a new women’s collection that transforms classic performance icons into fashionable sport hybrids.
Nike’s design ethos celebrates the body in motion, which was very much in sync with sacai’s vision for the line. Sacai Founder, Chitose Abe, began her design journey by mining the Nike archives and pulling references from running, tennis and American football, reinterpreting Nike’s heritage sportswear silhouettes. Through Abe’s language of surprise and juxtaposition, the classic Nike Windrunner becomes a skirt featuring plissé-style pleating. A hooded sweatshirt is trimmed with a peplum detail. Panels combine with strategically placed openings and underlays to create fluidity when the garments are still or in motion, playful as the wearer turns from front to back.
The shared appreciation for innovative materials and technology was paramount to the Nike/sacai design process. The partners explored different ways to utilize the materials at hand and also establish exciting new fabrications. A special mesh lace hem was specifically developed by Nike and Abe to adorn the trim of graphic Nike T-shirts.
Celebrating Nike’s most iconic material innovation, the collection places special emphasis on two different weights of Tech Fleece, which has been reimagined into five signature sacai styles including the crew sweatshirt, crew hooded sweatshirt, crew top, crew knee-length dress and sweatpants. “The idea of functionality is important to me, as is fabric innovation, which has always been at the heart of sacai,” Abe said. “For me, Nike is an original icon with performance and innovation at its core.”
RIGHT: SACAI FOUNDER CHITOSE ABE. PHOTOGRAPHS: CRAIG MCDEAN, COURTESY OF NIKE. STYLING: KARL TEMPLER
