Issey Miyake and ASICS turn a sneaker into a design experiment

The new Issey Miyake footwear collaboration with Asics is presented as the shoe of the future.

The footwear project, Issey Miyake Foot, stems from the close collaboration and partnership between MDS, Miyake Design Studio, and the sporting goods company Asics, and follows a specific path: it starts from the iconic Asics Stripes model to generate a new, avant-garde, innovative and functional shoe named Hyper Taping.

The intent behind Hyper Taping is simple: to find a precise balance between flexibility and solid support of the shoe, both fundamental needs that are resolved in a single structure. The model features a low sole inspired by wrestling models, because of the large support surface area, and a redesigned insole specifically to promote grip on the ground. New thick, sticky elastic bands create a line around the foot and are designed to stabilize and support body movement, combined with a padded tongue. The shoe comes in different colors, from neon to nude. 

Hyper Taping is not a simple shoe, but the result of a long process of study and experimentation, a fashion and design product born from the anatomical study of the foot and the research of the two Japanese companies that were able to bring out their identity in a single result. This collaboration, and this success, certainly cannot come as a surprise: Issey Miyake's brand, by definition attentive to the world of design, had already faded the boundaries between fashion, art, and technical production by counting many and varied collaborations, and Asics, on the other hand, has experimented with exclusive brands and personalities of the caliber of Kengo Kuma.

This type of work on fashion and design, which is increasingly technical, appears as a glimpse and idea of what will be the fashion of the future, capable of generating products with recognizable aesthetics but also functional, the result of avant-garde research and experimentation.

Opening image: Courtesy Asics