Nike, Please Avert Thine Eyes From MSCHF's New Sneaker
Ceci n'est pas une Air Force 1. MSCHF's new Super Normal Sneaker is definitely not Nike's signature off-court court shoe, definitely.
Though it's not dropping until June 23 for $145 on the MSCHF Sneakers app, MSCHF teased the Super Normal Sneaker on its MSCHF Sneakers Instagram page way back on May 17
The above product photos were leaked online before MSCHF properly revealed the shoe but, when reached for comment by Highsnobiety, MSCHF confirmed that the imagery is legit.
Anyways, yes, MSCHF's Super Normal Sneaker does indeed bear some resemblance to Nike's Air Force 1.
However, the Super Normal Sneaker is also very much its own beast, boasting a fully bespoke upper, insole, and sole unit, the latter complete with a unique, wavy tread pattern underneath.
Much like the other MSCHF Sneakers products — including the "Wavy Baby" shoe and Nike-parodying TAP3 — MSCHF's Super Normal Sneaker certainly borrows stylistic cues from staple sneakers that've come before but it warps those design elements beyond recognition, literally.
"The sneaker landscape is so incredibly stale," MSCHF told Highsnobiety earlier this year. "If we were going to collaborate with a sneaker brand, they'd have to break open a new mold: we're not just doing a MSCHF colorway."
And break open the mold MSCHF did, getting turned down by footwear factory after footwear factory until it found one capable of creating the shoes it so desired.
The end results were entirely custom-made, with obvious homages to famous sneaker silhouettes but not a single borrowed element. Even the divisive "Wavy Baby," currently subject to lawsuit from Vans, was built from scratch.
It's still risky business for MSCHF, clearly, and Nike is no friend to the Brooklyn-based art collective.
MSCHF's short-lived battle with The Swoosh over its Lil Nas X-cosigned Satan Shoes ended with the sportswear giant standing victorious.
As evidenced by the lawsuit-skirting TAP3, the scarring is still visible within MSCHF HQ, and the brand told Highsnobiety that it took some of those legal lessons to heart.
Nike is no less defensive of the Air Force 1 than of the Air Max 97 repurposed for the Satan Shoe, so MSCHF is once again willfully poking the bear.
But the whole point of the Super Normal Sneaker is that it comments on the ubiquity of Nike's best-seller, dually reshaped both as art piece and, well, sneaker.
That argument wasn't good enough for the courts in the case of the Wavy Baby, though, so MSCHF better hope that it's Super Normal Sneaker is normal enough to skirt suspicion.
