Jonathan Anderson has enormous shoes to fill. Fashion’s current golden child is the first person since Christian Dior himself to simultaneously oversee Dior’s menswear, womenswear, and haute couture — a mammoth task! — while following in the footsteps of two longstanding prior Dior designers, including Kim Jones, the first person to make Dior sneakers genuinely cool.

Kim Jones left behind a vast array of sneakers that gave Dior footwear an unprecedented relevance. Now, the sneaker responsibilities fall on Anderson’s shoulders.

His first move was to reshape a deep-cut Nike sneaker. Or at least, that’s the vibe of the brand-new Dior Roadie shoe. 

The Roadie is indicative of Anderson’s left-field tastes, a peculiar combination of moccasin-style suede boot and a flat-as-a-pancake sole unit that make for a shoe both bizarre and cohesive.

It's a weird shoe made weirder by the fact that Anderson's footwear designers likely got the idea for the Roadie from Nike’s long-forgotten Considered project.

That two-piece underfoot unit that utilizes Dior’s archival woven cannage motif as grip? It’s a direct throwback to the sole of Nike’s Considered boot from 2005. The moccasin-style round vamp encircled by hairy suede? You’ll find an almost identical construction on Nike’s suede Considered BB Mid shoe. 

Put the Dior Roadie, just released on Dior’s website for $1,200, next to these archival Nike Considered shapes and the obvious similarities become as clear as the small differences, like the Dior shoe’s boxier shape and doubled-over tongue stamped with the French house’s logo. These Nike references are Anderson's team both flexing its sneaker knowledge and reflecting Anderson's adventurous aims for Dior, a blend of new and old.

Nike Considered is a niche line revered and resold by only the most devoted Nike fanatics. Launched in 2005, Considered was poised to be the future of Nike’s sustainability efforts, proposing glue-free shoes made from natural and recyclable materials. It took a decade for a crack team of Nike designers, including heavyweights like Tinker Hatfield and Andreas Harlow, who worked on the Nike Presto and Air Yeezy 2, to make Considered happen. The result was some of the most plainly unconventional and forward-looking Nike shoes in its history, so ahead of its time that it fizzled out towards the early 2010s. 

A shoe this strange wouldn't have come to be under Dior’s previous leadership; Kim Jones' team preferred to riff on familiar shapes, like Nike Dunks and everyday dad shoes.

Empowered by designer Thibo Dennis, now the mastermind behind Pharrell’s Louis Vuitton footwear, Kim Jones oversaw a stream of hyped and approachable sneakers throughout his seven-year Dior Homme tenure, remaking footwear favorites into luxury goods. Jones’ debut collection premiered the best-selling monogrammed B23 hi-top, basically a luxe Chuck Taylor, which was followed by the Dior x Jordan 1, technical Birkenstock clogs, and so on. 

Jonathan Anderson, is also not above imitating popular sneakers — his first Dior collection also included a Dior-ified Vans skate shoe — but he’s clearly keen to create the kind of shoe only a small circle of sneaker nerds can truly appreciate. As his debut sneakers demonstrate, Anderson wants it all: a Dior for everyone and a Dior defined by the details.

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