The All-Leather "Air Max" Is Cool But the Pouch Loafer Is Cooler
Hender Scheme's "Manual Industrial Products" leather shoes may not longer the semi-viral sensation they were a decade or so ago but that doesn't make them any less excellent. It's just that, by now, we've collectively wised up to the fact that the Japanese company also makes many other excellent styles of shoe. Just me?
But, hey, if the pouch-affixed loafers and square-toed slip-ons leave you craving statement shoes, the leather "Nikes" ain't going anywhere.
Hender Scheme's new collection again sidesteps convention by debuting for the Winter/Spring season — whereas most companies produce for Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter, Hender Scheme flips the script — with a handful of wonderfully wearable weirdness.
There's the "Dress Purse," a low-top leather shoe fitted with a small zippered pouch, the barely there "Oval Moccasin," and a thick sneaker-loafer that's a twist on a signature Hender Scheme style (its Vibram Rolling Gait sole is frequent touchstone).
Even to Hender Scheme admirers, these are fresh forms demonstrative of the brand's restless ingenuity.
But it was the Manual Industrial Products line that made Hender Scheme internationally famous and, so, it's worth addressing the Air Max in the room.
Whereas past entries in this series transformed everything from Vans skate sneakers to adidas football shoes into bench-made lace-ups — these are absolutely not sneakers — the newest iteration returns to familiar territory. Hender Scheme has made Manual Industrial Products iterations of Nike shoes as disparate as the Jordan 4, the Air Force 1, and the Air Max 90, so the Air Max 97 is really just par for the course.
It's once again cut from Hender Scheme's typically robust veg-tanned leather, whose pale beige exterior will darken and soften with wear, with the AM97's recognizable layered paneling translating into sumptuous stacks of pigskin fitted to a similarly dense piled leather outsole.
And though the shoe works just as well as an object as it does as a wearable, it's not as obvious a go-to as the approachable low-cut shoes that inform the rest of the collection. The all-leather Air Max is great. It's just that we've seen it before.
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