Last month, during the unveiling of the LEBRON XV, we were able to get hands and ears on Jason Petrie discussing the design process for LeBron James’ latest signature shoe.
Now as the shoe is about to launch in the U.S. he sat down with Nike News to give us even more background on the 15 including the launch styles… Ghost and Ashes. The article gave us a first look at Petrie’s original sketches.
The LeBron 15 design main focus was on a brand new approach towards aesthetics. “LeBron and I have talked about Flyknit products for a while now, but we never had a conversation about making it look a particular way. He leaves the creative portion of it up to us (unless there is something specific that he’s looking for). The aesthetic of this shoe comes from knit. We always want the overall vibe of LeBron’s shoe to be aggressive, stylish, modern and classic. Flyknit, with its texture and dimension, defined the aesthetic from the get-go. We let that organic nature of the knit take us to that really aggressive diamond chainmail type of look.” says Petrie. “This new iteration of Flyknit, Nike BattleKnit, is built specifically for LeBron. He needed something more than what knit uppers, to date, could provide for him structurally and also in the way that he wanted it to come to life.”
As for the tooling the Nike Basketball team tried to combine the best features of both Max and Zoom Air. “The LeBron 15 has a brand new air unit, a combination of Air Max and Zoom, formed for incredible transition, really great impact protection and a lightweight ride. It’s all the things you would expect out of Zoom Air with the comfort and protection of Air Max.”, Jason tells how it’s always been crucial for The King, “LeBron loves max Air. Obviously he generates a lot of impact force. The energy return and the rebound and the quick response feel of the Zoom Air in between the pylons and the heel and throughout the midfoot and forefoot allow LeBron to run and jump at full speed, come down with force, absorb that impact and then sprint off in another direction while returning energy to every step of that. It’s a propulsive feel.”
Sneakerheads are probably interested more about storytelling and seems like there something special with the LeBron 15 to look forward to. “With every shoe in Nike Basketball, we’ve got an amazing team of color and materials designers. LeBron has given us some insight. There are some things that we wanted talk about through his lens. I think you’ll see that throughout the course of the season as we explore those stories and see all these little details and touches that provide this incredible narrative.”
Source: nike.com.