Backstory: Yoon Ahn is the founder and creative director of AMBUSH and Dior Homme jewelry design director and longtime Nike collaborator. Back in February 2021 Yoon’s first collaboration with Nike hit shelves, a monochromatic hot pink Dunk High with an extended rubber Swoosh that perches beyond the shoe.
The drama: Nike revealed a forthcoming Dunk Low not made in collaboration with Yoon that features the same extended Swoosh design detail. Yoon replied “LOL” to a tweet revealing the design.
On one hand: This isn’t the first time the sneaker world has seen this and should maybe be expected at this point. Brands own all elements of a design and have a reputation for replicating unique design details from big name collabs for general releases. A similar situation happened back in June 2022 with adidas taking significant cues from the Yeezy Slide to create the adilette 22. Ye obviously called this out.
On the other hand: If big brands are putting money into producing these details, molds, etc. wouldn’t it be assumed that they would own and potentially exploit them? Why else would they bother? Wouldn’t they just limit collaborations to colorways in that case? It can be viewed in poor taste, but at the end of the day the market will decide if they want Yoon’s Swoosh on a GR.
Other members of the sneaker community like If_I_Can’t_Wear_SNKRS were quick to call out that Yoon’s series of monochromatic Dunk Highs are heavily inspired by the Nylon Magazine x Nike collaboration that was released in 2009. So is it all just a free-for-all?
Where do you stand on the debate? Drop a comment below.