On Tuesday night, NikeLab and sacai celebrated their new collaboration with an explosive live performance in a north London amphitheatre. Choreographed by FKA twigs collaborator Ryan Heffington, a troupe of dancers spun, swung and contorted beneath flashing strobe lights and throbbing beats, dressed in athletic hybrid pieces that fuse Nike archive classics with sacai founder Chitose Abe’s iconoclastic take on modern tailoring. “Everybody knows Nike,” Abe explained to us – “but I wanted to transfer those codes to something that nobody has seen before.”
For the collaboration, Abe chose to remix heritage shapes with her signature feminine silhouette. Peplum flounces and pleated panelling cut through Tech-Fleece sweatshirts, while a Windbreaker jacket was reimagined as a pleated skirt. The 8-piece capsule collection explores the boundaries of movement and gender, focusing on expression and functionality. The show mixed street and ballet influences, culminating in a ritualistic vignette, as a performer hung perilously upside down above of a ring of statuesque dancers, before twirling delicately to the floor.
Watch the film above, and see the full set of images below:
