Nike Ippeas

Equestrian

words & interview by Nick DePaula

While most of you know him as the man behind Jordan Brand’s Carmelo Anthony signature line and the Air Jordan XX1 and XX2, D’Wayne Edwards, Jordan Design Director, indeed designed the Nike Ippeas, Nike’s first foray into Equestrian. In a departure from his daily tasks at Jordan Brand, Edwards was given the project as a design challenge he was eager to face. Equipped with an asymmetrical zipper that allows the rider far greater ease of entry, the Ippeas also embarks on new territory in the traditionally far more conservative Equestrian boot market. Greek for Horse, the Ippeas also features a rubber traction inset at the forefoot, where normally a hard wooden sole can be found, providing the rider with greater traction and control while atop the sometimes unpredictable animal. It also features a full-length Zoom Air liner, improving upon century-old cushioning technologies found even today in competing boots.

Definitely one of the design gems of the Olympic Footwear collection, the Ippeas hasn’t gone unnoticed in the global design community, as it was recently named a reddot Award Winner. Since 1955, the Germany-based Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen, one of the world’s most highly touted institutions of design, has been honoring noteworthy product design across thirteen product categories with its annual reddot award. This past year, a record number of 3,203 entries from fifty-one countries were nominated for consideration, and the international jury named the Ippeas one of 676 product designs worthy of the reddot “quality label for good design.”

I was able to catch up with D’Wayne Edwards for an exclusive phone conversation in which he detailed the design inspirations behind the Ippeas, how he was assigned to the project, as well as his limited history with horses.

Nick DePaula: How were you approached to design this shoe?

D’Wayne Edwards: Sean McDowell had put together an overall design strategy session for designers to come in and contribute to all of the different Olympic sports. He invited everyone to come, but I was unable to make it due to traveling. When I got back, I shot him an email to apologize that I wasn’t able to make it, but I asked him if there was anything that he needed help with. He got back to me, and said, “Actually, I heard that you have done a lot of casual and boot stuff in the past,” and he asked if I wouldn’t mind taking a crack at doing an Equestrian boot. I knew it would be a challenge, because I didn’t know anything about Equestrian and I had never even ridden a horse before. So I just looked at it as a design challenge more than anything else and a chance to expand my knowledge of different types of footwear that I could try and create.

So you’ve never ridden a horse yourself?

Maybe a pony. [laughs] I don’t know if that counts.

How long did the total process take?

Once I got the sketches from Sean, as there were some designs done beforehand of a different concept, it probably took just a couple days. I did some research on the sport and drew a few quick thumbnails and colored it up, and I gave Sean a call. I met with him and Julia Reopher, the lead developer on it, and they liked the sketch and the idea of fusing the Motorsports feel to it. They just didn’t know how the actual riders would like it because it’s such a traditional sport. Once the riders saw it, they actually loved it. It didn’t take that long actually, maybe less than a week.

Could you describe the challenges in designing a high performance Equestrian boot in what is traditionally a very conservative genre?

In my career, before I got to Nike, I was doing casual shoes and boots, so I’m familiar with that world. But what it needed to be as far as construction, I didn’t know anything about Equestrian as a sport. Just like anything else that I try and get after, I just started by grabbing books and starting to read about it and grabbing videos that a young lady who rides provided me with. I spoke with her about the different things that riders look for in their boots. One of the things I noticed in seeing photographs of the boots in action was that they have a lean-forward position on the horse, even though they’re going very slow. I had just come back from seeing the Jordan Motorsports team ride, and I thought it would be cool to influence and add some fast lines from a Motorsports boot to an Equestrian boot. It had the same stance as a Motorcyle rider, it’s just that they’re going about three miles an hour. [laughs] So I thought it would be cool to make the boot look faster than they normally look, plus I also approached it more from the stance that it is Nike, and people wouldn’t expect Nike to just do another clean and simple boot either. So, I just took some liberties from that point and thought about how I could influence and combine Nike design and technology into a design that is generally a lot more traditional. The idea was to make this traditional sport look a little more unconventional, yet not jeopardize the simplistic nature that they’re used to.

Have you heard feedback from riders who’ve worn the boot? How’d they like the Zoom Air feel?

Immediately after we got the first prototypes, we sent them out to the first riders to test it, and they loved it. They loved the idea of taking their sport and making it a little bit more, for lack of a better word, sexy. They loved that it was more aggressive and more sexy. They loved the full-blown Zoom Air feature as well, and the heel stability provided by the heel counter also. Traditionally there’s just a hard wood heel, and there’s really no internal cushioning. You’re just sitting on top of that wood lasted outsole. So elevating the cushioning was a breakthrough. To also add the TPU to the back, it also gives the shoe a more futuristic and aggressive feel than what that traditional sport is used to. They loved the visual, and once they got a chance to put the boot on, they were sold on just how comfortable it was, not only from the Zoom liner, but also because we did some things differently with the internal lining to make it more comfortable.

Did you learn anything new in researching the background of Equestrian boots that might help how you design basketball product?

It’s a little bit difficult, because their stuff is just one piece of leather, and sometimes just two pieces of leather that runs around the shoe. Their stuff is designed with a different mentality. Just the simplistic nature of what the boot is and what it represents is all about the shape and the quality of leather. That is a little bit difficult to do in basketball product, but obviously shape is important there as well. It’d be cool to do a one-piece upper in Hoops, but there’s just no adjustability then. The refined nature of the boot itself would be interesting to apply to a basketball product.

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