What do you do with all those stacked-up, unread New Yorkers on your nightstand? Recycle ’em, of course. Maybe if they’re lucky, they’ll end up with an afterlife as cool as the Nike Women’s Premium Print Pack, a limited edition set of sneakers designed out of shredded magazines. Snag a pair of these, and you won’t need to feign interest in that 10,000-word article on Balinese maskwork when you crash a publishing soiree — you can just wear your media-elite street cred.
The Print Pack contains three Nike styles: The Nike Flash Macro Premium (sail/birch), Nike Blazer Mid Premium (sail/khaki) and Nike Air Rift Premium (sail/sport red). But don’t sweat those details, because according to Nike, unless you live in Europe, China, or “select emerging markets,” you don’t have a chance in hell of getting your hands on them.
No, you must admire the Print Pack’s retro-chic bricolage from the digital remove of this blog: from the delicate stitching of these bits of deathless prose (or ad copy, more likely) into unique patterns on each shoe, to the rugged transparent coating that protects the literary moments-in-amber from the elements that buffet any footwear worn outside the redoubts of obscure underground clubs or European runway shows. (Pretty good, right? Maybe Nike can turn my disposable hackwork into rad kicks someday!)
Credit where credit is due: the design of these sneaks is pretty great. The bits of print look like vintage filmstrips running up and down the shoes’ clean lines. And who knows, maybe there are whole narratives to be discovered in the cut-up fragments adorning your feet. Crazier things have happened — just ask Jonathan Safran Foer.
The Women’s Premium Print Pack will “debut in limited quantities” starting January 1.
[Images courtesy of Nike]
