When Eiichiro Homma founded Nanamica he had an interesting background as a developer of Western brands’ licenses in Japan. He had managed to turn the Japanese division of The North Face into something completely new by combining the brand’s classic designs with the Oriental fashion point of view. Urban and multifunctional lines that inherited the technology from the brand for a very different use to the original one. Soon after he would do it again with Helly Hansen, a Norwegian outdoor brand that was linked to the sea, the same way The North Face did so with the mountains.
REEBOK AND NANAMICA PLAY TENNIS WITH ALIENS
Nanamica is one of those Japanese brands that manage to revive classic silhouettes through collaborations that only in a few occasions approach sports brands. Their latest work with Reebok turns a historic tennis model into a science-fiction reference.
Nanamica, Eiichiro Homma’s second venture, is based on his experience with performance products in extreme conditions; using his experience on how technical fabrics work in the sea and the mountains to create new products. His mix of an urban style and technical material has served as an example for a whole new wave of young brands. Adventure is the element from which Nanamica’s narrative is built, but in their new collaboration, they stay away from nature or at least nature as we know it. Because outer space is also nature.
In 1986, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) had to deal with a new nemesis, a parasitic extraterrestrial being. She did so surrounded by designs specifically created for the Alien sequel which was set in the year 2179, adapted and personalised uniforms just as they were seen in the Vietnam war and one-off appearances of brands that would probably be more relevant in that distant future. Reebok, at the time the most successful sports brand, designed for Ripley a sneaker that was obviously inspired by some of the models from the eighties but with the details of a future that, if we only look at the sneakers, seemed to be far too near.
Nanamica comes close to those Reebok Stomper that Ellen Ripley wore, avoiding all explicit references and placing its most identifying element, the strap that substitutes the laces, in a Club C. A silhouette linked to the most classic tennis clubs, and an element that only a few will link to sci-fi, together in a new model that stays away from its history, the Reebok Club C Stomper. Dates that further Nanamica away from its usual context, and create a new environment that unexpectedly adapts itself to classic lines.
