Hippie talk

Nike described the new series of "space hippies" in the introduction video.

The fashion industry has been criticized for producing waste and pollution for a long time, and has been trying different materials and production methods for many years in an attempt to reduce the impact on the environment.

But in most cases, brands try to treat waste materials as "normal materials", and not many products, like Nike, deliberately differentiate their appearance to show that they are "made of garbage".

Having said that, these new sneakers are really not like garbage, but more like elaborate "garbage aesthetics", which just seems to be impossible to catch.

It is said that for a long time, Noah Murphy-Reinhertz, the head of sustainable design of Nike's innovative kitchen, has been "rummaging through garbage" in the company, collecting scraps produced in the production process of different Nike products.

▲ Noah Murphy-Reinhertz

A Nike spokesman said when introducing the space hippie project. This means that new products can't use new materials, and they can only start with existing materials.

During the brainstorming, one of the members suddenly spoke. In space exploration, there is a concept of "in-situ resource utilization", that is, on other planets, astronauts can only use local resources if there is no material supply from the earth.

▲ The astronauts in "Mars Rescue" had no supplies and had to grow their own potatoes.

In the team's view, this lifestyle on land is hippie, but in the context of space, the name "space hippie" was born.

In the space hippie series, the new product mainly uses recycled materials in three parts.

This series of uppers are woven by Nike's proud flyknit technology. Generally speaking, flying weaving based on digital design can reduce about 60% material waste compared with traditional tailoring, and some raw materials are polyester recycled from discarded plastic bottles, which is relatively efficient and environmentally friendly.

In the Space Hippies series, the raw materials used for flying weaving include not only recycled polyester, but also corner fabrics and old T-shirts found in the factory during Reinhertz's "garbage collection". Compared with ordinary air woven uppers, space hippie uppers can reduce carbon emissions by about 70%.

The insole in the shoe also has its own story. 100% space hippie 0 1, 02, 03' s insole materials come from the leftover materials produced when making the ZoomX midsole of the flagship running shoe Vaporfly NEXT%, which can not only be recycled, but also achieve relatively high physical properties.

▲ Vaporfly NEXT%

As for the most striking pothole midsole, about 15% of Nike Grind rubber is added to the traditional foam material, which has a lower carbon footprint and a lighter overall.

Nike Grind is a project that Nike started in 1990s. It mainly recycles the waste produced in the production process, unqualified shoes and discarded sports shoes provided by consumers, and then uses these materials to make new sports shoes, clothes, runways, stadiums and lawns. Now, Nike Grind has recycled more than 30 million pairs of shoes and created more than 654.38 billion square feet of sports ground.

We see the scattered dots of different colors in the midsole, which are made of Nike Grind rubber.

As mentioned earlier, Feizhi actually began to use recycled plastic bottles as raw materials very early, and the application of rubber like Nike Grind has a long history. In fact, in fiscal year 20 19, 76% of Nike's sports shoes and clothing products used recycled materials.

These recycled materials look no different from ordinary materials after treatment, so that even the customers who buy them may not know it.

▲ ZoomX Vista Grind also uses Nike Grind rubber, but you may not see it.

A relatively "environmental visualization" product should be VaporMax Random, and its upper is woven with various "random" color schemes with flying lines that should have been discarded. Although this sole Air Sole air cushion also uses about 75% recycled materials, it doesn't look special.

▲ VaporMax random

In contrast, the design of space hippies is like "showing off" their sustainable design concept.

The "rough" feeling of the upper comes from the mixed scrap T-shirt fabric; In order to minimize carbon footprint, the design team should not only choose recyclable materials, but also consider that the processing technology of these materials is low enough. Therefore, these recycled fabrics used in uppers have not been dyed twice, maintaining the original color and looking more "original". As for the soles with different color points, it is the "true color" of Nike Grind.

The sneaker culture pays attention to symbolization, which is composed of vision and story. You have to make people recognize what you are wearing at a glance and know the story it represents.

Nike has always been good at creating these symbols.

Air Max and AJ are particularly successful examples.

Before the launch of the Air Max series, Nike actually began to apply air cushions to sports shoes, but it was not until Air Max 1 that Nike began to show transparent air cushions on the soles, showing the visual impact of compression and rebound with sports. "Behind the scenes" is the inspiration of Pompidou Art Center in Paris and the lightness represented by "air".

▲ print advertisement of airmax1,from Complex.

AJ and Michael are close? Jordan is related. Although there are new styles every year, AJ 1 series, which is closely related to Jordan's growth and fame, still occupies a very high position in popular culture. Most of the different color schemes point to Jordan's personal story. Lena Waithe, the author of a sports shoes cultural project "You don't have these", recently said:

As a sneaker born for "refreshing the low carbon footprint", the story of space hippies is the topic of the times, and its unique visual language endows it with high recognition.

Reinhertz said in an interview with Ai Faner.

This "chatterbox-opening" ability can help the wearer express his recognition of the concept of sustainable development, and at the same time, it can better spread the concept of sustainable development in Reinhertz's view.

In addition, the significance of space hippies is not limited to the product itself. For the design team, a series of new tools created during the development process mean that internal designers have more environmental protection design options:

For example, now we have begun to see AJ 1 and Waffle Racer Crater space hippie versions, both of which adopt the material technology in the space hippie series and have a unified "garbage aesthetics" visual system.

▲ Air Jordan 1 "space hippie", from Hypebeast.

People who know can recognize these "visual signs" symbolizing sustainable development at a glance, and their collection value is+1.

▲ Waferese Crater, picture from SBD.

According to a survey conducted by LIM College of Fashion Business University, 90% of millennials said that they believe they can persuade the government and enterprises to develop in a more sustainable direction, and even are willing to resist unchanging brands for them. However, when asked how many people have actually bought products that conform to the concept of sustainable development, only 34% people nodded.

"Fashion Business Review" believes that this gap comes from the fact that there are not enough suitable products in the market, or the promotion and introduction of products are not in place, which consumers cannot understand.

It can be seen that if the design of a product is sustainable, it is very important to show this.

Anna wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, believes that after this epidemic, consumers will pay more and more attention to the sustainability of products when shopping:

For large enterprises that want to do global business, this is an unshirkable corporate responsibility.

In 20 16, Nike announced that "the vision of a low-carbon and closed-loop future is a part of the company's development strategy", and made plans in the fields of employee treatment, supply chain transformation and carbon footprint reduction by the end of fiscal year 2020. It publishes an impact report every year to review how far it is from the goal (they call it "athlete mentality"). From 2065438 to September 2009, Nike announced the "Go to Zero" plan, aiming at achieving "zero carbon" and "zero waste". Sustainable development is also an important theme of a series of new products launched by Nike for the Tokyo Olympic Games.

Although Adidas did not publish a relatively systematic sustainable development plan like Nike, they also introduced some sports shoes made of "garbage".

Since 20 15, Adidas has cooperated with Parley for the Oceans to launch sports shoes made of marine garbage. Last year, Adi released FutureCraft Loop, a completely recyclable concept sneaker, and continued to polish its corresponding business model. In May of this year, Adidas announced that it would join hands with Allbirds to build sports shoes with a carbon footprint as low as 2kg.

Interestingly, when the first generation of FutureCraft Loop was released, Adidas discussed the aesthetics of FutureCraft Loop.

Although FutureCraft Loop can be recycled, the color will naturally change as consumers wear it for a long time, and the logo on shoes is still red. In this way, the color of new shoes made of recycled materials will be "impure". With the increase of recycling times, the color of Loop will gradually change, and these colors will become the carrier to tell the story of these materials. In their view, this may be a good opportunity to tell a new story:

At the end of last year, Adidas recycled the first generation of FutureCraft Loop as raw materials and released the second generation of FutureCraft Loop, which adopted a "faded blue" color scheme, but did not introduce more design concepts, only showing "flexibility in the production process".

Although sustainable development is not limited to the application of materials, recycled materials are likely to become the mainstream in the future.

As described in the science fiction cartoon "Fly Out of the Future", by the year 3000, we will probably "recycle everything", and when we run out, we will not throw anything away.

From this point of view, how to deal with recycled materials in the most environmentally friendly way and design a set of "garbage aesthetics" for these materials is likely to become a compulsory course for all fashion brands.