LIFE

Fighting food insecurity and empowering through agriculture, the non-profit based in Upstate New York puts community first.

Dan Colen—the world-famous artist known for canvases covered in chewing gum, spray painted with the words “Holy Shit,” and “Candle” paintings inspired by a single frame from the Disney animated film Pinocchio—wanted an escape from the downtown excess he grew accustomed to in the aughts, running around with the likes of Ryan McGinley, Kunle Martins, Nate Lowman, and the late Dash Snow. He discovered a 40-acre property in rural Upstate New York, but felt the need to do something more than simply live on a farm.

“Founding Sky High wasn’t a decision I made one day but rather a part of this kind of process,” Colen tells HYPEBEAST. “Eleven years ago, it led to my initial conversations with friends and mentors about agriculture and food apartheid.

It also introduced me to my first lessons on how fraught the food system is and the ways in which it is used to oppress certain communities and destroy local cultures and land.”

The artist learned that in New York state alone, around 10.5 percent—or just a little over one in 10 households—are faced with food insecurity. Some families don’t have enough money to buy nutritious food, go to bed hungry without eating, or have to decide between buying groceries or purchasing medication. (A problem likely to worsen today with the current economic downturn, inflation, and rising rents.) Colen knew he wanted to do something to contribute, so he created Sky High Farm.

Located about a two-hour drive from New York City, the 501(c) (3) organization combats food insecurity through a multi-prong approach that serves as “a bridge between regenerative farming and food access initiatives,” according to its mission. The first is food production and donation, using sustainable farming practices to cultivate produce and livestock, 100 percent of which is donated to food pantries, food banks, and other organizations throughout the state that provides access to nutritious food. The second is regenerative agriculture, which fights against climate change through a multitude of practices that are centered around local ecology, soil health, pasture management, and water conservation. The third is community involvement through fellowships, collaborations, and communities of practice, allowing fellows from nearby communities to gain experiential knowledge about farming through an intensive on-site paid program that pairs agricultural work with formal education. Sky High Grants, meanwhile, provides grants for farms and farmers—priority is given to those who are BIPOC and/or LGBTQIA+ identifying—by building equity in agriculture and supporting a range of projects. Simultaneously, the organization inspired the creation of Sky High Farm Workwear, a clothing label created with the help of DSMP, the Dover Street Market incubator, worn on the farm that boasts collaborations by creatives like Quill Lemons and Tremaine Emory.

“I’M INTERESTED IN WITNESSING MY LIMITS AS AN ARTIST, AND I WANT MY PURPOSE TO BE INFORMED BY MY EXPERIENCES INSTEAD OF JUST ASSUMING THE DECISIONS

I’VE MADE EARLIER ARE STILL MEANINGFUL TO ME. THE BIRTH OF SKY HIGH FITS WITHIN THIS TRAJECTORY.” —DAN COLEN

One of Colen’s close friends that was key to forming the farm is its chief operating officer, Josh Bardfield. He grew up with the artist in Northern New Jersey, and earned a master’s in public health from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health before working in academia and non-profits. Now, Bardfield runs the show at the farm, working with a team of about a dozen people to make sure that everything operates smoothly. “Farming is a very difficult profession,” says Bardfield, who also oversees the Sky High Grants program. “The agricultural system in the U.S. is not one that is built to support small, sustainable agriculture. It’s an industrial system that favors efficiency over ecology.”

Sky High Farm’s grantees come from all over the United States. One recipient is Ashokra Farm, a four-person queer and POC collective in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “We are using our grant funds to expand our farm,” shares founder Anita Ashok Adalja, explaining that the grant has been used for several things, including a new trailer, liability insurance, stipends, and even to offset its annual Quickbooks subscription. Another recipient is Saugerties Free Food, part of the Underground Center in Saugerties, New York. “With the grant, we can start scaling up in our community,” says program director Chase Randell. Some of its funding will go towards recruiting teens for its compost initiatives and garden-building squad as well as reopening the area’s free farmers market.

“Systemic inequity is what drives our organization,” says Colen. “Nutritious food is a basic human necessity and right, yet industrial agriculture and profit-driven policy continue to devastate the health of our land and bodies, the effects of which are most prominently seen in marginalized communities. We believe that by investing in community-centered small-scale farming, these sustainable methods of nutrient-dense food production can be led by and feed the people, not only the wealthiest few. Among other things, we see ourselves as a model for what our food system can and should look like.”

While there is a lot of work that needs to be done to allow food security for all New Yorkers, Sky High Farm is making moves— since 2011 it has donated 87,000 pounds of produce and 50,000 pounds of protein to food pantries, food banks, and other organizations across New York state.

Raf Simons has been spending a lot of time thinking about his roots as of late. From fondly looking back on memories of his childhood in Neerpelt, Belgium to revisiting his creative beginnings as an industrial designer, it seems that even the most cerebral of creatives aren’t immune to nostalgia. “When I was a teenager,” the 54 year-old tells me one warm afternoon in Milan, “the small village I lived in had nothing but a little record store, and the only thing I thought about was getting out. Now, all I want to do is buy a house and go back to the countryside.”

It’s a notion that many of us have experienced over the past two years—an impulse feeling that became a movement and led to the so-called “mass urban exodus” from major cities on the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when subsequent lockdowns across the globe coerced city dwellers to trade in their flats for country cottages. Having said that, before long, the stories of regret emerged, citing a sickness of silence or a longing for late-night grocery stores. In the case of Simons, the issues are likely irrelevant. Even if he were to relocate back to his hometown it would surely be impossible for him to find himself in any one place for too long of a period of time.

Over the course of his fashion career, Simons’ roles at the houses Jil Sander, Christian Dior, Calvin Klein, and Prada have brought him to live cross-continentally for the majority of his adult life. That was, of course, until the pandemic grounded him in Antwerp, where he has been confined within the walls of his own home, which he shares with his beloved dog. It was during those peak restrictive months that Simons got to thinking about the objects surrounding him—how he feels about them, how useful they are, and what he couldn’t live without. It was also at this time, that he was in the midst of an ongoing conversation with Danish textile brand Kvadrat about taking their pre-existing collaboration to the next level.

“The most important thing was no furniture. I said to them, ‘I don’t want to do a sofa, or a chair, or anything like that.’ It just didn’t feel right,” Simons says in his typically definitive style, which, should you be on the receiving end, you can imagine makes you trust whatever call he makes almost instantly. His relationship with the Ebeltoft, Denmark-based company began through the legendary graphic designer Peter Saville, who had provided an early creative influence for Simons—he discovered Saville’s work through cover art on record sleeves in the aforementioned music store nearby to his Neerpelt home. Living in a place that, Simons felt, was lacking in cultural hotspots, the boutique became his artistic escape, and led to a keen interest in music and the subcultures surrounding different genres. It also led to a desire to work alongside the art director, which, remarkably enough, eventually ended up happening—and not just occasionally but frequently. Their professional relationship today has spawned over 20 years’ worth of collaborations. Saville himself had already been working with Kvadrat for a long time, and was responsible for all aspects of the company’s visual communication. “He told me to get in touch with them, because he knew I’d like what they were about and what they do,” recalls the designer. Not only did that turn out to be true, but the feeling was also reciprocated. And so, Kvadrat got Simons on board in 2014. Together, they have gone on to create immensely successful ranges of fabric that are used across apparel, furniture, spaces, and even large-scale installations. It’s a comfortable space for the Belgian designer, he says. “I don’t really feel like the end voice with fabric. I am making something that serves another creative,” he explains. “I feel like I’m just an ingredient, and I’m very at ease in that position.”

Captured exclusively, a new collection of objects from the cult fashion designer exhibits his practice in industrial design.

But eventually Simons came to an idea that he felt compelled to create. He put it to the brand’s CEO Anders Byriel and the two set about making it a reality. The result is the Shaker System, a simple-looking storage solution made up of a wall-mounted horizontal bar—from which hangs a series of accessories, including a key chain, cap, tote bag and shopping bags, woolen throws and cushions—a leather-clad mirror tray, accessory boxes, a leather magazine strap, and storage sleeves. It has been designed to bring together all the loose ends we so often lose track of around our homes, which for the designer, just like the rest of us, range from house keys, to “poo-poo bags” for his pet. It feels almost naive to think, but there’s something incredibly reassuring about the fact that one of the greatest designers of our time might too walk out of his home having forgotten something vital or had indeed put something down in another room only for its exact location to escape him.

“I sometimes get in the house, and an hour later think ‘Shit, where did I put my glasses!’ and I then have to go hunt for them everywhere,” he says, laughing at his own misfortune. “That very simplistic way of thinking of a human being’s daily behavior brought me to create these objects and pushed me to try and find a solution.”

When it came to developing the design, Simons took his inspirations from a range of sources. Its name derives from the bare-necessity lifestyle of the Shaker people, who famously forgo ornamentation when crafting furniture, instead prioritizing functional form and proportion. This often leads to an aesthetic closely aligned to minimalism, which, given its huge resurgence in popularity in contemporary interior design and decoration, has seen Shaker methodologies and aesthetics adopted by the masses. He also cites an exhibition of Joe Colombo as providing a conceptual springboard, in which the Italian design maestro created an adaptable domestic system. As in his previous work, Simons also looked to the aesthetics of American minimalist artists Donald Judd and John McCracken and the French decorative arts designer Jacques Adnet—all longtime influences for the designer. But his final point of reference came from his mother, who had a giant cut-out key in their childhood home on which everyone in the household would put their keys onto when they entered. “Deadly ridiculous and ugly, but so smart. Nobody ever lost a set,” he jokes. “In all seriousness, though, it helped me to think about the way in which people live their lives right now. In a sense it felt like I was going back to my industrial design roots,” he says, referring to his formative education; he completed a degree in the subject at the LUCA School of Arts in Genk in 1991.

“Rather than making a statement piece, I felt drawn to thinking about the way our worlds are now, and what we need from our increasingly domestic situations. What are the objects that are always what you need?” This problem-solving, no-nonsense attitude is something that Simons’ creative process is founded in. Despite spending the majority of his career in fashion, his approach to collections often seems way more synonymous with that of a designer of objects, rather than clothes. “There is a strong connection to my past—from when I graduated as an industrial designer—in this new series. It’s still in my system, of course, but being a fashion designer brings about a different daily life in relation to time and the speed at which we have to create things.”

Despite finding his creative feet as an industrial designer—his 1991 graduate collection “Accessoiremeubles,” for example, encompassed seven pieces of furniture based around the human torso— Simons’ strong interest fashion has always existed. As a student, he would spend time at the Antwerp cafe Witzli-Poetzli with the likes of photographer Willy Vanderperre and stylist David Vandewal musing on the work of Helmut Lang and Martin Margiela, the latter would be the first fashion show Simons would attend while interning alongside the designer Walter Van Beirendonck. Soon after that in 1993, he founded his now-iconic eponymous menswear brand with an aesthetic rooted in his obsession with youth culture. In the early days, collections would be shown through videos or presentations, and the Raf Simons label’s first runway show took place in 1997.

In October 2000, Simons was appointed head professor of the fashion department of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where he remained until 2005. In the same year, he was also appointed creative director for the Jil Sander brand, where his use of innovative tailoring and impeccable minimalism was credited with restoring its commercial appeal. Luckily for the Prada Group, Simons’ appointment helped to move the brand away from the turmoil it had experienced after its founder herself had resigned on two occasions, citing difficulties with its parent company’s CEO Patrizio Bertelli, who had purchased her label in 1999. By late 2011, reports were flying around that Simons was in the process of interviewing for the top slot at Christian Dior, which had remained vacant since John Galliano was fired in March 2011. He got the title to much acclaim, but it was there that his view on the trials and tribulations of the fashion world as it currently exists became relatively well-known. Simons seemed to struggle to keep up with the excruciatingly relentless calendar of couture and ready-towear while at Dior, as documented in the 2014 film Dior and I by director Frédéric Tcheng, which shadowed the designer as as he prepared for his first couture collection at the house.

“Fashion became a monster, it’s always against the clock,” he tells me, reflecting on the differences between the disciplines he works across. When the unexpected news of his planned departure from Dior broke, journalists in their troves began to speculate over the reason for his leaving. “The news threw me back to the startling honesty of something Simons told me the day after his wildly lauded first couture show in 2012,” wrote Vogue’s Sarah Mower to commemorate the occasion: “‘I’ll stop if I have no ideas anymore,’ he said. ‘Fashion is not the only thing that can make me happy.’”

Two years later, he arrived at Calvin Klein, where he would once again weave together his love for both object and adornment, most notably updating Gaetano Pesce’s “Feltri” chair for an exhibition at Design Miami and Art Basel. Then in 2020, Miuccia Prada and Bertelli announced his appointment as co-creative director of Prada, a role that seems to fit him very comfortably given its intersection of fashion, academia, and high-concept design. The twists and turns of Simons’ career have been much discussed by fashion historians and enthusiasts alike, but it seems that the decisions he makes are never on a whim and are always intrinsically authentic to the person he is at his core. Thanks to this appointment at Prada, and of course, the work he creates through his own label, the enigmatic presence of Raf Simons continues to inspire creatives across the globe.

During our time together—and despite being a relatively private person—he is willing to share details about his younger life with a vulnerability that we’ve come to expect many creatives of celebrity status not to have. Returning to his childhood and formative years, Raf and I find a number of common grounds: we were both raised in families not particularly au-fait with design professions, his mother a cleaner, his father an army night watchman; we have a shared love for Yorkshire in the north of England, where I was born and where he had visited alongside photographer Terry Jones decades earlier; and finally, an excessive amount of empathy for inanimate objects, namely stuffed animals. In fact, Simons credits his infant companions as the first belongings he recognized as being “designed.” “When I was a young child, I really loved certain objects around me,” he recalls. “I was a child of the 1970s, and at the time, Greenpeace was always making toy animals to raise proceeds. I was obsessed, but I had to have them all out and organized on show. I couldn’t have them stuffed into closets.”

Thinking of Raf as a young boy, living in the countryside and obsessively organizing his furry toys doesn’t seem a million miles away from the mindset he is in now. Designing with Kvadrat has allowed him to take a breather while returning to his creative beginnings, providing time to indulge in the process, the references, and the preexisting knowledge of which he has by the bucketload. His Shaker System almost draws on this innate need to make sense of the space around him via organization. Its textural fabric applies a sensorial element, which he remembers vividly from the Greenpeace bears, while the simplicity of the system as a whole speaks to this longing for a simple life.

“These days, my perception of time feels so different,” he says. “When I’m back in my village, and I’m connected to nature, everything seems to change.”

Alfonso Gonzalez Jr.’s neighborhood of East Los Angeles is an important place for the artist. It’s where he finds beautiful elements and subjects that comprise his interdisciplinary approach to art-making. From weathered surfaces to hand-painted signage, Gonzalez Jr. uses his overall practice to highlight communities that are quite often overlooked, especially in densely populated cities across the globe where they are typically unbeknownst to tourists and new residents. These ethnic havens are usually sidelined by creative industries that favor star-studded locales like Los Angeles’ decadent Beverly Hills neighborhood or New York’s ritzy Upper East Side, both home to the powerful and wealthy. Through his mixed media works—that involve everything from painting to sculpture—he is on a mission to shift perspectives of neglected cultural regions and the people who live in them.

On a late Friday afternoon, I chat with the artist over the phone while he runs errands in his car. During our conversation, we draw parallels between our respective coastal home cities. I grew up in the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world: Queens. Popularly described as the “World’s Borough,” where locals identify closer with their neighborhood rather than the city as a whole. This is the same for Gonzalez Jr., who mentions that many locals in his neighborhood have immense pride for the streets they grew up on rather than their regions. And while it’s easy for some to succumb to the attitudes and personalities of the neighborhoods that raised them, the two of us ping-pong the thought of how exploring various communities beyond our own can introduce unique perspectives.

But Gonzalez Jr. isn’t solely focused on a particular individual or ethnic background in his work; instead he concentrates on showing the multiplex of immigrant identities in his practice. “Sometimes it’s on a singular subject,” he explains. “Sometimes it’s more of a traditional landscape that captures the essence of my surroundings.” Most importantly, he wants to preserve the aesthetic nature of his community and compel onlookers of his work to discover the beauty of these overlooked parts of his city—all of its cultural modes and even imperfections.

“With things drastically changing in the world, I’m really just trying to capture what’s going on right now. With the rapid advancement of technology the world’s changing at an unprecedented pace. There are certain things that are tough to talk about. Since COVID I’ve seen local businesses go under which has led to the rise of houselessness,” he says.

“I’m just giving the L.A. experience that I don’t see in art or even on T.V. And if it even is on T.V. or movies, it’s the very gangster— cholo—sort of thing. All of these things are real. The Hollywood thing is real. The gangster shit is real, but that’s not always my experience. I guess, to some point, it is, but that’s not me. I’m neither of those things.”

The artist’s passion for shining a light on his community and unconventional approach to art-making is rooted in his own self-taught development. After years of working as a sign painter—and following in the footsteps of his father—he achieved a great understanding of painting techniques and how to utilize them in all sorts of public settings. He took his practice internationally; painting ads all over the world and exposing himself to other communities beyond his westcoast residence. But eventually, Gonzalez Jr. found the work monotonous, and he left to focus more seriously on his contemporary art practice.

To get his name out, Gonzalez Jr. launched numerous artist-led shows. He founded empty spaces in L.A. and organized exhibitions with works by his close peers such as Mario Ayala, who is known for his intricate airbrush paintings, and artist Diana Yessenia Alvarado, who specializes in ceramic sculptures. They were eventually noticed by acclaimed curator and gallerist Jeffrey Deitch, who put them in a major show called Shattered Glass, which gathered a group of 40 international artists of color. More recently, Gonzalez Jr. gained exclusive representation from Matthew Brown. The gallery launched his first solo exhibition, There Was There, which showed works that reassessed the “clichés and misinformation about Los Angeles” earlier this year. In it the artist spotlighted “an entire world that is immigrant, that is low-income, working class, that is Black, Brown, Asian, set within the rich cultural enclaves that sprawl throughout the city—a world that already has always been the true fabric of Los Angeles culture.”

We end our call with thoughts on his overall art practice and where he’s taking his work next. “An art practice is something that I don’t think you’ll ever fully arrive at,” he tells me. “I think there’s good moments, but I think if you arrive, and you know what it’s all about, it’s kind of like, What’s the point of it? It’s cool to keep looking, and I’m still looking.”

MODELS M’BENGUÉ, TURNER BARBUR, THOMAS WRIGHT MAKEUP AKIKO OWADA HAIR EDWARD LAMPLEY PRODUCTION OLIVIA GOUVEIA FOR FAMILY PROJECTS CASTING NATALIE LIN AT IN SEARCH OF SET DESIGN BJELLAND + CLOSMORE LIGHTING DIRECTOR DAVID DIESING STYLIST ASSISTANT AVERY MCQUEEN PRODUCTION ASSISTANT IAN KING

In honor of the sportswear juggernaut’s 50th anniversary, we break into the archives of its Beaverton, Oregon headquarters to study the iconic pieces that have impacted the last five decades of culture and foreshadow the exciting future ahead.

Nike’s co-founder Bill Bowerman once said, “If you have a body, you are an athlete.” It’s a statement that—for anyone hearing it for the first time—might cause an eyebrow to raise. After all, not all of us possess the natural ability to soar for a tomahawk, jam like LeBron James, execute a forceful running forehand like Serena Williams, or shatter a two-hour marathon barrier like Eliud Kipchoge. The phrase, however, perfectly encapsulates why the brand has garnered so much success in its 50-year lifespan: Nike has always been predicated upon driving culture forward by reaching the masses—even those that don’t have an ounce of an interest in sports in their bodies.

1972 MOON SHOE

CORTEZ 1982

AIR FORCE 1

1983 WINDRUNNER JACKET

1985 AIR JORDAN 1 DUNK

1987 AIR MAX 1

1988 AIR JORDAN 3

1990 AIR MAX 90

1991 AIR HUARACHE

DRI-FIT

1995 AIR JORDAN 11

AIR MAX 95

1996 AIR MORE UPTEMPO

1997 AIR FOAMPOSITE ONE AIR MAX 97

2005 FREE

2009 AIR YEEZY

2010 KOBE 6

LEBRON 8

2011 AIR MAG

KD 4

2012 AIR YEEZY II

ROSHE RUN

FLYKNIT RACER

FLYKNIT TRAINER

2014 KYRIE 1

2015 FLYEASE TECHNOLOGY

2016 TECH FLEECE

HYPERADAPT 1.0

2017 VAPORMAX

FE/NOM FLYKNIT BRA FOR WOMEN

OFF-WHITE X “THE 10” COLLECTION

2019 TRAVIS SCOTT X AIR JORDAN 1 HIGH “MOCHA”

2020 DRAKE’S NOCTA LINE

ZOOMX ALPHAFLY

SPACE HIPPIE LINE

2021 GO FLYEASE

2022 ISPA LINK

FORWARD APPAREL LINE

Of course, there’s a plentitude of ingredients that go into this recipe for success, and Nike’s products themselves undoubtedly rank towards the top. Everything from the imprint’s boundless catalog of footwear offerings to its vast portfolio of lifestyle and performance apparel are what draw the consumer in, rake money into the company’s pocket, and ultimately allow the brand to propel forward because of the data and feedback it receives from its athletes of all calibers.

Tracing the evolution of Nike’s footwear from 1972, when Bowerman took his wife’s waffle iron and created the Waffle Racing Flat, to present day, where the brand is pushing out sneakers that can lace themselves up with the simple push of a button and kicks that are crafted from recycled scraps, it has always been led by the powerful intention to improve performance. Whether in the literal competitive sense or in a larger, lifestyle meaning. Anytime Nike approaches a new task, in fact, its designers constantly question how a specific product can help someone run faster, jump higher, walk more comfortably, and, of course, look swaggier. One can ramble on for days about the silhouettes and technologies that the sportswear giant has brought into fruition and have transcended the industry as we know it: The entire Air Max lineage paved the way for sneakers to have more flexibility without compromising structure. Air Jordan 1s are the definition of a shoe that can effectively function both on the court and on the runway at the highest level. Nike Flyknit technology demonstrates that sneakers can simultaneously be reductive and durable. The Roshe Run proves that minimalism and an affordable price point can set off an entire new wave. FlyEase gave new hope to those with disabilities for the future of assistive footwear. Dri-FIT tees and Tech Fleece sweatsuits carve out new lanes in the athleisure realm. The list goes on. “The brand’s founders have ingrained a progressive mindset into the company’s ethos and its employees,” says Andy Caine, Nike’s VP of Footwear Design. “It’s permeated throughout the years continuously, and is still relevant today.”

There’s no doubt these products have become treasured in the consumer’s everyday life. Take the allwhite Air Force 1s, for example; one of the most popular lifestyle sneakers in history because of their sheer omnipresence. From streetwear aficionados to high school kids that know nothing of fashion to soccer moms, everyone owns them—not to mention Dr. Dre, whose closet holds a crispy pair for every day of the week. Then there are the die-hard Air Max, Jordan, Dunk, and SB collectors and those constantly tracking down the rarest of pairs. “I mowed the lawn all summer to buy my first pair of waffle trainers when I was 15,” remembers artist Tom Sachs. “My collaboration with Nike has brought a lot of people to the sculpture that I make, but it’s also helped people to see a sneaker as a work of art. I draw no distinction between a sculpture and a sneaker, it’s all art to me.” The heritage of the brand runs so deep that it’s provoked obsessive behaviors that cause consumers to accumulate the same models in hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of colorways. The fervor is unmatched and often collectors will go so far as to sift through infinite amounts of eBay pages, travel to different countries, force all of their family members to enter store raffles, and pay astronomical resell prices just to make sure their grails are safely in their own possessions.

Beyond the actual products themselves are the ambassadors that promote them, and for the Beaverton-based entity, it chooses to split this into athletes and catalyst marketers, many of whom are seen not only as pro sports players or favorite artists but heroes, too. The former is made up of some of the most legendary competitors that the planet has ever witnessed. Nike’s basketball department is loaded with bonafide legends, such as Michael Jordan and the late Kobe Bryant, as well as future Hall of Famers in LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Paul George Giannis Antetokounmpo, Ja Morant, Devin Booker, and more. “Over the course of my career and my time here at Nike, for all of this to come together is surreal,” James tells HYPEBEAST. “Together we push what it means to continually innovate and break the timeline of what they say is your prime.” Moving into other sports, you’ll find names like Tiger Woods, who has unequivocally raised the standards of golf excellence. There’s tennis phenoms galore; Andre Agassi, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Serena Williams, and Naomi Osaka have all been sponsored by the Swoosh at some point during their illustrious careers. “As a longtime partner of the brand, I have learned that Nike sets goals and then achieves them,” Williams says about her relationship with the imprint. “They start each quarter with intentions and plans. Nike taught me that planning your business and having long term goals are super important.” NFL superstars Russell Wilson and Odell Beckham Jr. have been major representatives for the brand on the gridiron, as have football superstars Cristiano Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, whose influences have been respected across the globe.

The catalyst side of the coin is replete with some of the most recognizable names in pop culture. Ask any religious follower of sneaker culture and they’d likely confirm that Nike’s collaborative roster is second to none. Musicians reign supreme in this category as the brand has connected with heavyweights such as Travis Scott, Drake, J Balvin, Billie Eilish, and G-Dragon, and this, of course, was spawned by the blueprint that creative genius Kanye West laid when he first introduced the Nike Air Yeezy in 2009. These alliances resulted in a deluge of effective collaborations that range from Scott’s ongoing Jordan partnership to Drake’s NOCTA line and G-Dragon’s own signature silhouette and beyond. Fashion brands and culture-shifting designers also land under this category. Whether streetwear or high fashion, Nike has tapped into the scene with force and tallied up impactful partnerships with the likes of Supreme, Stüssy, Off-White, Comme des Garçons, Cactus Plant Flea Market, Union, Sacai, Jacquemus, Dior, Patta, Ambush, Fragment Design, Undercover, and others.

This history has been cemented with even closer connections to the fashion designers behind the fashion brands, from Sachs to Matthew M Williams to Yoon Ahn to Kim Jones to Jerry Lorenzo, all of whom have lifted the Nike universe to new heights with their own perspectives.

“Working with Nike has allowed me to express Ambush in new ways and to new audiences,” Ahn explains. “By collaborating across Nike’s product catalog—most recently with the Air Adjust Force—I’m tapping into both Ambush and Nike and creating something new.”

Of course, the profound impact that the late Virgil Abloh made during his tenure teaming up with the company is imperative to note, and has forever earned him a spot on sneaker culture’s fictional Mount Rushmore. “Our relationship was pivotal,” says John Hoke III, Nike’s Chief Design Officer. “Virgil brought in a voice of the youth and the street with ‘The 10’ project, which was a major lift for us in design and helped the company regain its footing in 2018.” Through the lens of his coveted high-end streetwear brand Off-White, Abloh was a creative force that delivered a breath of fresh air into the space by dissecting a barrage of Nike’s most iconic silhouettes and giving them new life via deconstructed builds. And with this momentum, the multi-hyphenate carried this over into his artistic director role at Louis Vuitton Men’s, where he assembled 47 LV x Nike Air Force 1 colorways that could arguably be the most iconic sportswear-meets-luxury joint venture to-date.

Humanization and storytelling has also been central to Nike’s DNA. “It’s been great to be able to brainstorm with Nike, and be in meeting rooms with people who do hear the athletes’ perspective and where the athlete feels like their contributions can be the most authentic,” says three-time Olympian and two-time medalist, U.S. soccer player Alex Morgan. “I was really proud to be a Nike athlete when they started the maternity line, because that was actually right when I became pregnant in 2019. It was great to give my input and support other soon-to-be mothers in their journeys.”

It’s one thing to sell millions of collegiate Dunk colorways, moisture-wicking workout tees, and weatherproof ACG jackets, but allowing others to connect to the brand on a personal level is how Nike has rallied its loyal fan base. Creating an annual collection devoted to the LGBTQIA+ community exhibits its desire to champion inclusivity. Endorsing Colin Kaepernick’s protests with a full-blown commercial is an iconic moment in its own right. Marketing Michael Jordan’s shoes as the commodity that will help you “fly” is simply genius. And fashioning a split-screen ad that encourages you to keep on pushing when society was infiltrated by a global pandemic was a spiritual uplifter the world needed. “Nike has meant a lot to how I’ve shown up as a creative,” says Janett Nichol, the company’s VP of Apparel Innovation. “It has made me a more thoughtful and creative person. I’m more apt to critically identify the things that I need to do to make somebody better at what they do and make the world a better place.”

The 50-year moment also serves as a celebration of reaching an atomic level of design. Nike’s cutting-edge technological advancements over the last five decades have permitted it to go from sketchbook to prototype in a matter of minutes, which positions the brand to create with precision and at accelerated speeds for the decades to come. You can expect a constant stream of innovations to pour out in the future, such as its groundbreaking Forward apparel collection and its allnew Air Max Scorpion model that are all first and foremost earth-friendly, and fashioned to help you move more fluidly and look more fly. “Our advanced robotic arms and machines allow us to come up with crazy form vocabulary and the ability to play with aesthetics, which will ultimately continue to push us into the future,” says Hoke. “You’re going to see a Cambrian explosion of product.”

Despite having sold-out SNKRS releases every week, a laundry list of unforgettable athlete moments, and billions in revenue gained every year, the sports-centric titan will continue to hone its “never satisfied” mentality to drive its creativity forward and separate itself from the pack. Speaking of NOCTA, Drake has a line on his song “When to Say When” off of his Dark Lane Demo Tapes album in which he raps, “How you getting hyped off of one hit? Do that sh*t again,” and Nike can certainly resonate with this when defining its business strategy in the past, in the present, and for the future. It’s going to keep innovation and inspiration on the frontlines. And it’s going to continue to remind us why rocking a Swoosh logo—whether on your chest, pants, or below your foot—is synonymous with feeling like the greatest version of yourself.