With an aim to exploiting advancement in technology for the improvement of their footwear and apparel collections, sportswear giant Nike has opened a new textile design studio in London.
The studio, which opened in Hackney last year, had not been publicised so far. This acts as a laboratory to explore new ways of using textiles in sportswear.
Nike’s vice-president of global design John Hoke is reported to have said that the new studio was a response to the increasing importance of advanced textiles in developing its sneakers.
“Lately we’ve been hiring people with engineering and textile degrees,” he said. “Old shoes were just flat sheets that you stamped and moulded. But this is not so anymore,” he said, referring to Nike’s Flyknit-weaving technology.
Flyknit, launched in 2012, was designed by combining yarns with different properties in varying densities. For instance, a single piece of fabric can be stretchy in one area, stiff in another and so on. This billion-dollar product range was invented accidentally by Hoke’s team while playing around with an off-the-peg knitting machine.
“It’s funny, we just hacked into a sweater machine,” Hoke is reported to have said during the Nike Innovation Summit in New York last month. “We bought a sweater machine and thought, what if we hacked it and didn’t make a sweater? And put different threads in? And elastics? How would that feel?”
Designers at Nike’s new studio in London are carrying out such similar experiments for development of different kinds of materials to design its apparel and footwear.
Hoke had also cited the presence of leading textile courses in the English capital as a key reason for Nike’s decision to open a design studio. Besides, Hoke felt that the island country has a lot of young talent who have a knack and the expertise for such creative things.
“We’re looking at waft and depth, and materiality, and they’re just trying stuff. Through that trying, we get a lot of great things,” he said.
Hoke’s team comprises over 700 designers, most of whom are based at Nike’s campus near Portland, Oregon. The brand also has designers in New York, Tokyo and South America.
Last month’s Nike Innovation Summit was held to present new products that athletes will wear at summer sporting events like the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and the UEFA Euro 2016 football tournament, plus other innovations including the Nike HyperAdapt 1.0 sneakers that have self-tightening laces.
