Nike Air Yeezy - Nike Sportswear and Kanye West present the Nike Air Yeezy.
The air yeezy shoes, which take West's nickname Yeezy, draws upon the innovations from Nike's rich sporting history and fuses them with original lines, materials, and design elements that reflect West's unique style.
Partnering with Nike Creative Director, Mark Smith, Kanye was taken through the product creation process, the same way athletes have with Nike Design for the past 37 years," said Smith. "Kanye is a natural designer - partnerships like this always enhance the creative experience and the end product." West agrees that the partnership with Nike has been exciting. A careful balance was sought, each time new elements were added, with existing elements being taken away - a design process Smith refers to as "reductionism". "Nike shoes need to function and always be innovative," said Smith. "So the first thing we did was to make sure the design process that Kanye and Nike Design went through, mirrored that of our athletes."
West is known for his non-stop energy both on the stage and off so the Air Yeezy had to support and sustain West from start to finish. An almost obsessive focus was put on delivering supreme comfort throughout the development of the shoe. Equipped with debossed ankle collar pods for added support and protection, extra-thick sock liners, a forefoot support strap, original functional tension lace loops, and Phylon tooling taken from the 1987 Nike Air Assault for added performance and comfort - all developed and integrated with one goal in mind: to keep Kanye on lock down in cushioned comfort during his performances during his many notoriously strenuous artistic live performances.
The forefoot support strap is premium grade patent leather and is of no-stitch construction. Clean seams are used throughout except for a premium suede toe wrap feature with visible stitch detail. Emblazoned across the Air Yeezy is an exclusive "Y" repeat pattern, as either a debossed or lasered detail, which takes inspiration from the Jordan brands iconic Elephant print material. This graphic treatment was developed by West and Smith to pay tribute not only to the name of the shoe and it's co-creator, but also to the various moments in history that spurred West's initial inspiration for the Nike Air Yeezy.