Nike Asked Four Women To Design A Women’s Shoe, And The Results Are Obviously Perf

Nike has very recently started dropping the Air Max Dia into select retailers and the reason you should care about it is this: the brand enlisted a fully female team, a designer, engineer, developer and product manager, to make a shoe for women by women.

The Air Max Dia came thru and it’s slick and tough. A low key upper, which is fairly translucent, makes the shoe easy to wear with anything at the flick of a sock. And the Air unit itself is major, allowing a bit of a stack heel. Keen.

“The sole unit ‘shell’ was designed to amplify and magnify the airbag window. Air is Nike and we know our consumer values innovation and technology as a style choice in addition to the comfort and performance we deliver,” the team told us.

“The tooling height and silhouette was designed to accommodate as much air and underfoot cushioning as possible, while delivering her a brand new silhouette to work into her rotation.” Got it.

Interestingly, and perhaps assuringly (for the fact that this is not a gimmick), when we asked the team about the importance of women designing for women, they declined it as a total necessity. “We have both Men and Women on our design teams,” they said. “And we all obsess stance, shape and proportion, colour and material… all the things that matter to her.”

In any event, the resulting shoe isn’t subtle in it’s achievements — it even had a GQ editor urging his male readers to “ignore the advertising, shuffle over to the women’s side of the store, and grab a pair.” Or you can simply go online and cop ’em here.