Surprise! Riccardo Tisci's Abrupt Nike Reunion Is All Luxury
Riccardo Tisci's Nike collaborations were always a bit off, in a good way. Tisci's extravagant Nike Air Force 1 sneakers predated today's "luxury name meets footwear brand" crossovers by over a decade, paving the way for many Nike collabs to follow.
Suddenly, Tisci and Nike are back together for something similarly luxe but otherwise wildly different.
That is, though the Riccardo Tisci Nike Mercer bag is very much a Riccardo Tisci Nike product, it's not the Nike product one would've expected from the duo's abrupt reunion.
This is an all-black pebbled leather handbag that wears an asymmetric cut, not terribly dissimilar in its modest opulence from some of Tisci's more understated Givenchy leather goods. Tisci's Nike bag is solely distinguished by a generously sized tonal Swoosh embossed above his gilded initials, which also appear on the removable strap.
Simple, oddly sumptuous as far as Nike accessories go, and available for $500 from Sivasdescalzo's website.
Tisci's Nike Mercer bag — presumably named for the street that hosted New York's now-shuttered NikeLab store that once released Tisci's AF1 sneakers — lacks the immediate pop appeal of, say, Jacquemus' recent Nike Swoosh-shaped sling but hints at a freshly luxe direction for his renewed Nike partnership.
Mostly memorable for their knowingly lurid graphic accents, Tisci's Nike sneakers were a loose callback to the design language that he honed at Givenchy.
Tisci's Givenchy menswear was exceptionally graphic, a then-contemporary (and, at the time, fairly rare) example of a luxury label adopting the visual codes of streetwear. His Air Force 1s, vivid in hue and pattern, mirrored this approach.
Those sneakers were also a reflection of Tisci's personal style. Even prior to his first Nike collaboration in 2014, Tisci was rarely seen wearing any shoes other than Nike AF1s. "It feels like the shoes have become part of me, part of my body," he once said.
Though he's mostly kept out of the industry spotlight since departing Burberry in 2022, Tisci has been busy. He's styled some celebs — even lensing some wearing Drake and Nike's NOCTA line — guest-edited a magazine, and even traveled great swathes of the planet, from Greece to Lagos.
Tisci's Nike reunion was quietly confirmed in 2024 by the designer himself, though details remain under wraps even now.
It's likely that his $500 Nike handbag is merely the first of several things to come. It'd be pretty unlike Tisci to not release some sort of collaborative Nike shoe, after all.
An Air Force 1, perhaps?
