The idea of Nike ACG was born a decade prior, when John Roskelley and the current VP of Patagonia’s Environmental Affairs, Rick Ridgeway, were trying to summit the K2, the second tallest mountain in the world and the deadliest. Several members of the American rope team used Nike running shoes for their stays at the basecamp. As they were lighter and more comfortable than the usual mountain boots, Roskelley and Ridgeway sent a picture to Nike with their sneakers in the foreground. Born close to the mountains, Nike had never tried getting into the weighty mountaineering world, but, couldn’t they use their technology for something new?
NIKE ACG RECOVERS 30 YEARS OF DESIGN
In 1989 John Roskelley and Jeff Lowe starred in a new Nike campaign. The sportsmen, the product, the colour, everything was different. There was a reason for it, the launch of a new line that was nothing like what the label had released up until that moment. Its name, Nike ACG.
In 1982, Nike presented the Magma, Approach and Lava Dome as their first approach in getting closer to mountain ranges. But the mountain was about to turn into something completely new, an outdoor stadium which could be used to practice any sport, orientation, mountain bike, kayak or races.
The first ones to demand a suitable product for these new needs were Nike’s own designers who would regularly visit Utah in search of an adventure. They needed a functional mountaineering sneaker that could be used for all types of conditions. That’s how ACG was born; All Conditions Gear, one of the most innovative, daring and cheeky collections from Nike.
The designers, used to asking great athletes about the performance of their sneakers, were now in charge of answering back. By designing for a new category that they had created themselves, they didn’t have anything to base their design on. Even the colourway turned into something completely new, as they were liberated by their usual restrictions from sport teams.
Adopted during the nineties by the streets in one of the usual waves of influence between the streets and the mountains, ACG keeps reinventing itself at any given time, closing eras and evolving and reaching higher levels but still keeping a style that is characteristic for its technical elements and for its disrespectful use of colours that can adapt to any kind of situation, with wild prints.
In their new summer collection, on sale from February 21st, Nike ACG recovers some of their prints in a collections that includes men and women’s items on top of a three-layered system that is culminated by the indispensable GORE-TEX.
