Martine Rose teams up with Nike

London-based menswear designer Martine Rose is the latest designer to team up with Nike on a capsule collection, which plays on distorted proportions, such as fitting a size 18 upper to size 9 tooling on a pair of Nike Air Monarch trainers.

Described by Nike as celebrating the “superhuman in a most human way,” the collection features tracksuits and football jerseys, as well as a completely re-articulated Nike Air Monarch.

It follows Rose’s ethos of design, where she finds things that: “appear ordinary but have something extraordinary about them and transforming those into items that are really quite exceptional.”

Rose added in a statement: “When we started, we never just followed the rules, really because our access was blocked. For one reason or another we had to find different ways to show.”.

The transformation takes place in experimenting with form fit, as well as clashing of contexts, with the tracksuits being scaled on basketball players while having English subcultural reference points, with jacquard football jersey highlighted by an elongated striped neck rib, and its oversized fit augmented with excess volume pleated into the sleeve.

“Basketball players are superhuman — their bodies have formed in different ways because of their profession,” added Rose. “We looked at a lot of players and their proportions. We then re-imagined their clothes on average-size people. For example, if I were wearing one of their tracksuits, I would have to repurpose it in order to fit my proportions; I’d have to tuck the seams.”

Nike x Martine Rose launches on Craig’s List

The tracksuit is then paired with the reimagined Nike Air Monarch, with the shape itself following on the same “imaginative exercise” as the apparel, by giving the “very ordinary shoe a very extraordinary shape” by fitting a size 18 upper to size 9 tooling.

To bring this vision to commercial life, Rose, who had chosen the Air Monarch for being “very American,” had to work closely with Nike, and they created a series of moulds that were topped with stretched synthetic leather. Only one shoe has a similar construction, the Nike Foamposite.

Rose added: “Collaborations are about communication. We wanted some of the forms to spill over the base and we wanted the heel on the outfit to be further out than the sole - things we were initially told couldn't be done.

“But everyone kept on pushing and we ended up developing these new shapes and ideas.”

While the Nike x Martine Rose collection officially releases in January, 2019, Rose did opt for a clandestine collection launch last week on Craig’s List, a digital space "far removed from hype cycle norms”.

“Sportswear has been appropriated for years by various youth movements in England and America. The acceptability makes it so interesting. People can mix it in with any other type of wardrobe,” concluded Rose “I’m very interested with how people interact with clothes. It says so much about who they are, who they want to be. It’s an emotional thing.”

Nike’s collaboration with Rose follows a recent launch with Ambush designer Yoon Ahn, where the jewellery designer produced a capsule collection featuring two coats, a stretch bodysuit, a crop top and fleece pants for the sportswear giant.

Images: courtesy of Nike