Trainer Of The Week | Nike x SIZE? Urban Safari Pack
Each week we will be speaking to our friends at The Drop Date and will ask them to pick their “Trainer Of The Week” to feature in our newsletter. There are no other rules other than we have to feature a new style each week, this week The Drop Date have chosen the: NIKE x SIZE? URBAN SAFARI PACK. Click HERE to check out more from The Drop Date.
“”””We knew it was coming, but we didn’t know it was going to be this good. The NIKE x SIZE? URBAN SAFARI PACK consists of four shoes – two NIKE AIR MAX LIGHT colourways and a couple of NIKE TOKI Mids, which are all scheduled to drop on FRIDAY 7.6.13.
Drawing inspiration from two heavyweight shoes from the first few years of the brands ALL CONDITIONS GEAR division, this Pack takes on the colourways of the infamous NIKE ACG AIR MOWABB, along with the lesser known gem that is the NIKE ACG LAVA HIGH. The Lava came first in ’88, followed a few years later by Tinker Hatfield’s favourite, the Mowabb in ’91.
The ACG division was created in 1989 by a handful of likeminded, thrill-seeking designers from within Beaverton, Oregon, the home of the global sportswear brand. They set about creating a brand within a brand, that catered for the outdoor enthusiasts who like to ‘tear up earth’, and do so in style. With technical advances flying out of the brands laboratories, conveyor belt style, there was no shortage of tech on the apparel and footwear, of which the colourways always complimented the designs, marrying earthy and muted tones with well chosen, and sometimes ludicrously ‘in your face’ neon colour pops, which really made the product stand out from anything else on the market.
As well as the ACG inspiration, the pack shouts out its respect to the much loved Safari print, which aside from the Jordan Elephant print made famous on the AJ III, has to be one of the most recognisable, and most utilised patterns in the brands arsenal of visual assets.
By applying the colourways of the Mowabb and the Lava to the Air Max Light, a shoe that as we mentioned in our last article on the silhouette, SIZE? can pretty much call their own, it’s fair that say they’ve captured the imagination of both the trainer enthusiasts amongst us, who know and love the colourways for their heritage, and the ‘blow the paycheque’ consumer, who’s earmarked them as the next essential ‘ must cop’ addition, to their ever-growing Air Max collection.
The Light’s upper is the crowd pleasing mixture of mesh, nylon and suede, and the colourways speak for themselves whilst the Toki goes premium in it’s fix up, with a lovely full leather upper, piped with canvas and the safari print adorning the heel. The Toki’s are more muted than their Air Max brothers, and by keeping the one piece upper simple with the one block colour, it allows the neon colour pops to give the shoes their character, and bring them both to life.
The NIKE x SIZE? URBAN SAFARI PACK, consisting of the NIKE AIR MAX LIGHT and NIKE TOKI both in the Desert Sand/Hyper Blue/Total Crimson and Black/Poison Green/Pink colourways drop next FRIDAY 7.6.13 exclusively with the retailer both in-store and online, so stay with us over on TWITTER, FACEBOOK and INSTA
And apparently, this is only Part One…