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- Upper
- Suede
- Released
- 2021
- Colourway
- Grey
Fragment Design x Sacai x Ldv Waffle Light Grey
Fragment Design x Sacai x Ldv Waffle Light Grey
- Upper
- Suede
- Released
- 2021
- Colourway
- Grey
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Culture Note™
Released on 15 September 2021 and part of the LDV Waffle line. This release has a suede upper in Light Smoke Grey/White/Black. The waffle sole is Nike's founding piece of engineering. Bill Bowerman, chasing something lighter and grippier than what American runners could buy, poured rubber into his wife's waffle iron, and the tread that came out led to the 1972 Moon Shoe and the 1974 Waffle Trainer. The LDWaffle is that lineage rebuilt as a design object by two outside parties: Fragment Design and sacai, a Japanese label whose entire method is doubling and layering garments until the construction becomes the decoration. Light Grey is the most architectural way to buy it, because with the colour turned down you actually see the doubling: the stacked Swooshes, the layered panels, the two of everything that makes this shoe read as a shoe on top of a shoe.
A grey layered shoe is a design object, so dress around it plainly. Recipe one: black wide leg trousers with a black tee and a long grey coat, a monochrome build where the shoe's doubled edges supply the only detail. Recipe two: washed indigo denim, a white shirt and a grey cardigan, a softer look where light grey ties the top and bottom halves. Avoid anything with heavy pattern. This is a city, gallery and dinner shoe rather than a training one. The doubled tongue and layered upper make it run large and wide, so many people take a half down. Brush seams dry, spot clean with foam, and never machine wash a layered upper.
Nike's collaborations have historically been commercial before creative. It distributed Onitsuka Tiger from 1964 to 1972, built its agency relationship with Wieden+Kennedy from 1976, bought Converse in 2003 for 309 million dollars, and acquired the virtual sneaker studio RTFKT in December 2021. Three way partnerships like this one belong to a newer mode, where the outside party is given room to change the shoe rather than to skin it. That the result still sells on Nike's oldest technology, the waffle outsole, says something about how much of the brand's authority sits in engineering that predates the Swoosh becoming famous.
The whole design argument here is duplication. The LDWaffle takes a running silhouette and doubles its components, so the eye keeps finding a second edge where it expects one, and Light Grey is the colourway that makes that legible rather than chaotic. Under the layering sits the waffle tread that started in Bowerman's kitchen, which is the historical joke of the collaboration: the most conceptual shoe Nike lends its name to is built on its oldest idea. Layered uppers trap more dust in their seams than a single skin does, so cleaning takes longer and needs a soft brush rather than a cloth. The doubled construction also makes the shoe feel wider underfoot than its numbers suggest.
- Upper
- Suede
- Released
- 2021
- Colourway
- Grey
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