Beautiful, Mother-of-Pearl... Running Shoes?
Though they've long been adopted as sneakers of the every day, ASICS shoes can also be art. Or so argues Japanese streetwear retailer atmos, who proposes a subtly gorgeous remix of a utilitarian running shoe that takes modern tech back to the 8th century.
At first glimpse, atmos' ASICS GEL-KAYANO 12.1 sneaker may just look like a tastefully tonal mix of muted blues and blacks. And, sure, that's what it is. But when it catches the light just so, the shoe's inspiration becomes clear.
For this collaborative sneaker, atmos was inspired by the historic craft of raden, where a lacquered surface is inlaid with mother-of-pearl harvested from shells. It's an intricate bit of handcraft that dates back to the Japan's Nara period, when the country absorbed all manner of elements from China's Tang dynasty, including raden. The results are quite exquisite, typically
Because you can't actually set mother-of-pearl into a dad shoe, atmos' GEL-KAYANO takes a less literal approach to interpreting its inspiration. Here, high-gloss panels affect a mother-of-pearl shine without any of that sensitivity inherent to the finer things, simultaneously channeling the gloss of raden's lacquer base.
As atmos correctly asserts on its site, the shoe is a fusion of "traditional Japanese beauty with street culture." (or so auto-translate tells us.)
Appropriately, it's launching the shoe on February 13 with an elegant installation accented by raden works created especially for the event by Nomura Takuya, the young artist who's modernizing his family's historic raden business. And what better way to do it than with sneakers?
There's something to be said about elevating the humble dad shoe into a thoughtful object of semi-art. ASICS is particularly game for these sorts of ingenuities, be they functional footwear or actual showpieces shaped from sneakers. Despite, or perhaps due to, its shoes being be built for function, they end up lending themselves quite nicely to expression.
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