Introduced in September during Comme des Garçons’ SS20 Women’s Paris runway show, a duo of new Nike Dunks work together to augment the iconic silhouette’s legacy in fashion.
Japan, and Tokyo specifically, plays an important role in establishing the Nike Dunk as an icon of the international urban cognoscenti. Energetic elements of city life — the club scene, graffiti, skateboarding, fashion — are embodied by adopters of the silhouette, many of them leaders of Tokyo’s respective scenes. In the 35 years since the Dunk first debuted, Japan-led releases and collaborations have continually steered the Dunk story forward, while keeping the shoe in line with its balance of community authenticity and creative ingenuity.
Comme des Garçons’ latest Dunk collaboration, a spiritual follow-up to a clear Dunk Hi from 2017, exemplifies Rei Kawakubo’s drive to continually create new things. The unisex design, like its predecessor, presents the Dunk with a new materiality — this time taking Nexkin, familiar through its use in the Vaporfly SP and React Element 87, and toying with its inherent transparency. Both versions, a CDG all-over monogram print and a simple black, highlight the potential of layered color to give the flat Nexkin a novel sense of texture and dimensionality — an effect fitting of Kawakubo’s overarching design ethos.
The Dunks, releasing in women’s sizes 5 to 14 and men’s sizes 3.5 to 12.5, launch exclusively through Comme des Garçons and Dover Street Market May 14. An additional release by Comme des Garçons’ partner wholesale accounts follows.