Nike Pushes Design Innovation At New Exhibition

The future is here for Nike.

The Beaverton, Ore.-based company, which in recent weeks launched power-operated, self-tying shoes, debuted a number of eyebrow-raising styles today that are timed to its Nature of Motion exhibition at Milano Design Week 2016.

The goal, according to the athletic giant, is to inspire “designers to dream big and think differently.”

With that in mind, Nike challenged designers to rethink the concept of natural motion. The outcomes on Nike’s Flyknit were varied in concepts — some designers pointed to future technologies — and use of materials, which ranged from cat whiskers to champagne packaging.

For example, one design takes cues from the puffy hair that ruled the 1980s. It turned Velcro hair rollers into a “customizable tooling system that can be adjusted to the wearer’s preferred shoe density, height and weight.”

Nike Flyknit Nature Of Motion Exhibition1 — It’s the ’80s: Designers were inspired by voluminous hair, turning curlers into a customizable tooling system.

CREDIT: Courtesy of Nike.

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Another style, meanwhile, plays with the idea of minimizing an athlete’s gait. The designer used plungers to pad foot impact and a “touch of pace-reducing suction.”