Rick Owens will be designing a range of shoes for both men and women (Photo:Getty)
Not strictly a tech story – but an intriguing one nonetheless…prominent American fashion designer Rick Owens has announced that he is teaming up with Adidas to design a new line of running shoes.
The award-winning fashionista is creating a line which will include six styles for men and four for women. The shoes will stick to one silhouette, but be available in a range of fabrics and colours–think mostly black, grey, and white; with materials being a combination of leather, suede, nylon, and canvas.
The shoes will initially be available only in the U.S., with prices reflecting the high-end nature of the two retailers’ markets, at around $400 to $500 a pair (not too shabby, considering Owens’ basketball shoes sell for around $1,200 to $1,600). The collaboration will debut on June 27th during Owens’s menswear show.
Owens described his reasoning behind the partnership as being pretty close to his heart, telling WWD magazine, “I work out like a fiend but I hate, hate, hate cardio. I realized I’m in my fifties now and I need to do something for my heart and lungs. So, I’ve got to start running! I thought to myself, ‘What shoes am I going to wear running?’ I can’t wear my big chunky basketball shoes–I’d look like a dinosaur running through the Tuileries.”
Owens decided he needed a cool-looking running shoe he could actually, well, run in, and called up Adidas. A collaboration was born.
“I’m not great at collaboration–I get too anal, too detail-oriented and impatient. It’s very innocent on my part–I’m not trying to provoke anyone but it ends up being a mess,” he told the trade. “But Adidas is a classic brand and it reminds me of Eighties hip-hop. They just have an authentic, old-school realness that appeals to me.”
Hopefully it will appeal to a whole new audience of runners as well!
[Source: Fashionista.com]
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