story

Behind The Design: Isamaya ffrench x Nike

My name’s Isimaya French.
I am a creative director
and makeup artist,
and I’m gonna be
taking you behind the design
of my collaboration with Nike and
and the new Vomero Premium.

I think my sense of design is quite fluid, which is why I love 
collaborating so much, because it allows me to really flex all of those different kind of artistic interests.
I love raw materials.
I love things that have that very kind of hard industrial, medieval, tactile quality to them.

So about a year ago, I collaborated with Nike and we created three different styles of sneaker.
We took this one step further this year and decided to collaborate on a shoe around the marathon. 
So we collaborated on the Vomero, which is this incredible sneaker design

So let’s talk about the shoe. 
There are so many technical elements in this shoe.
I wanted to create something that felt quite monochromatic and tied everything really nicely together.
So we used different tones of silvers, grays, chrome detailing on the back and on the tongue.

And then one of my favourite details about this shoe is actually the sole. 
Now this is a graphic based around a reflexology map of the foot, and I developed a tool in collaboration with this shoe, which is actually to help with sports recovery, so I really love this little touch.

So for the apparel collection, I wanted to create something that felt connected to the sneaker.
So I went for an all gray, again, monochromatic with this kind of ombré effect on the short.
So we’ve got this nice ventilation slip up here which looks very sexy when you’re running.

I think one of my favourite processes was working with  the Nike team and looking at all of the incredible textures and materials that work on all of the different parts of the shoe.
I mean, it’s quite overwhelming. All of the different back pieces, we had real metalized elements made.

It was just so amazing to see how a shoe can come together in such a complex way, and that there are so many different elements that you do have to consider materially when designing a trainer.