Football is certainly the world’s game. The sport can be found growing into nearly every aspect of modern society. As football grows and as the biggest brands in the world start to realise the game’s marketing power, we're starting to see some of our favorite innovations on pitch creep into the world of fashion.
Whether it's brands using fashion to expand upon a football based collection or taking bits and pieces from a popular pair of boots, it has certainly grown into a relationship that has massive potential for both sides. While the jump is being made by most major brands in football, there's no brand embracing the strength that the game can place behind their products like Nike.
It might have started with creating lifestyle shoes that paid homage to some of the greatest boots in our lifetime (Tiempo Trainers and the Fast Forward Mercurial Air Max series, just to name a few), but Nike seems to be going all in on testing what is successful on the pitch and seeing if it can provide success elsewhere.
In the last few months, we've seen Nike taking every upper creation that their fan-base enjoys and putting it on a lifestyle shoe. Although the Tiempo has been given the “lifestyle” treatment for a while, Nike first made the jump into some of the more modern sensibilities by creating the Free Mercurial SuperFly. By removing the NikeSkin and allowing the FlyKnit upper to exist and move without the same finish we see on the FG boot, Nike created a comfortable shoe that resembles a FlyKnit Lunar shoe with the addition of the high-top collar.
The Magista might have been the next logical jump, but instead Nike decided to treat us to the Free HyperVenom Mid. Taking the incredibly soft NikeSkin upper and putting it in a lifestyle package was something had us all scrambling to snag a few pairs! Nike added on a mid-top lush collar that makes it look like it might have been born from a basketball court instead of being derived from something off the pitch. Then, Nike took the Magista Obra and crafted the Nike Air Footscape Magista. Taking ideas from their FlyKnit Chukka line and the trendsetting Magista, this creation continues to show that taking innovation from wherever it rears its head can result in some amazing combinations.
So, where will companies draw their next little bit of genius from? With PUMA recently releasing a few colorways on their lifestyle shoes that had been influenced by gear from the pitch, we wonder if we will start to see adidas bringing their game off the pitch... It is tough to think about which one of their boots would be able to function well as a lifestyle shoe, but it took a few subtle changes for Nike’s shoes to take shape. Adidas is certainly a heavyweight in the realm of both what they can offer on AND off the pitch, so it would certainly be something massive if the Three Stripes blended something together.
Is this the future of football boots? Whenever something is successful on the pitch will we see a slightly altered version on the street? Nike has definitely done a great job with the first few combos and we cannot wait to see what else the boot world has in store. Can you think of a boot from the past that you wish had been translated to a lifestyle shoe? We would have worn the sole completely off a pair of the CTR360 Maestri III in a lifestyle shoe... completely off...
