Thom Browne & ASICS Didn't Just Make a Shoe (EXCLUSIVE)
This being Thom Browne, a collaboration with ASICS is not merely a pair of sneakers. Or three. Browne and ASICS sought to capture something bigger — a moment! A feeling!
In partnership with director and writer Durga Chew-Bose and Robbie Lawrence, a fine-art photographer who's worked with companies like Apple and Carier, Browne devised a tangible object that could flesh out the world he envisioned with ASICS. It's not just a shoe, or a zine, or a newspaper. It's a sensation that encompasses than them all.
But the zine was a good start.
"The storyline behind the shoot was seeded from a video I saw about ten years ago of Thom running in Central Park," Lawrence says. "Over time, it evolved into the idea of casting runners in suits. It made sense to situate the narrative in Tokyo: a city where formal dress is still part of the everyday, and where the rhythm of the morning rush hour already contains this sense of urgency and repetition."
The zine combines Lawrence's ethereal shots of Thom Browne-suited models dashing through urban sprawls with the designer's ASICS underfoot with essays and assertations from Chew-Bose that prod the nature of activity and routine.
"I’ve always been fascinated by artists who maintain a style over decades. In a period where there’s almost a constant demand for change and novelty, those who stick to their central aesthetic interests are very intriguing," continues Lawrence, who recalls an admiring conversation he had with Browne about the painter Frank Auerbach, who remained constant even as his work became increasingly valuable. " I like this idea of repetition. The palette of Thom Browne is very mutable — it can exist in bright light or in shadow."
Tokyo's high-gloss sheen proved a natural fit, as did its denizens. "What was amazing in Tokyo was how these characters in suits folded into the general crowd," Lawrence says. It felt like we had constructed a world for them even though it already existed." In the big picture, too, Browne's work is a natural fit for Tokyo.
"Japan has always been so supportive of my work," Browne tells Highsnobiety. "I find that the Japanese place quality at the top of their minds when approaching any facets of their life and I’ve always approached my collections the same way. The highest level, never compromising craftsmanship for anything or anyone."
Browne, a lifelong runner, describes ASICS as "a brand that is the best at what it does." The sneakers they created together were "not overdone but in unity with each other — the perfect partnership." These Browne-ified ASICS GEL-Kayano 14 shoes are overtly ASICS and subtly Browne, coming to life in the details — like much of Browne's work.
The shoes are part of this gesamtkunstwerk that is the Thom Browne x ASICS endeavor, which expands much further than sneakers. Amidst Lawrence's light-dappled cityscapes, Chew-Bose grapples with notions of repetition and Cary Grant in North By Northwest, arguably the most major moment in jogging-while-wearing-a-suit history.
It's a complete package of product as project, where the journey is actually the destination. In the case of Browne's speedy salarymen, quite literally so. The shoes, glorious they may be, are going places.
"The shoe is simply a compliment to my world and how I live inside of it," says Browne. "That’s what makes this collaboration so authentic because it speaks to the core of what both brands do so well, together — finally."
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