Reebok's New Sneakers Are Inspired by Midcentury Modern Eames Furniture. Here's Why.

There aren’t too many objects you can see on display at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and still purchase for your home. But one of them is the lounge chair and ottoman by Charles and Ray Eames. The fabled husband-and-wife design team—whose ethos held that post-war living spaces should be simple, beautiful and comfortable—made the lounger for Herman Miller Furniture in 1956. And despite being 66 years old, the chair's molded rosewood frame, tufted leather seat and stainless steel feet are as sleek and stylish as ever. Indeed, so analogous with chic is this modernist lounger that it popped up everywhere from the real-life living rooms of Muhammad Ali and Steve Jobs to the cinematic abodes of Tony Stark (Iron Man) and the James Bond character M, head of MI6. Harry Styles Stars in Revival of Apple’s Iconic ‘Silhouettes’ Ads Now for the bad news: If you want this Eames chair, it’s going to set you back a cool $6,495 at Herman Miller. Fortunately for design fans, a curious alternative will appear on the market this week. It’s not a plush leather lounger you can sit on, alas. But perhaps it’s the next best thing: one you can wear on your feet. The Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman is still chic—and still expensive. A walk through the postwar period As part of its ongoing collaboration with Eames Office that began last year, Reebok is releasing its Eames Office x Reebok Classic Leather collection. It arrives as a trio of limited-edition kicks inspired by some of the designers’ most culturally influential pieces. The lounge chair-inspired model is called Rosewood. It features a woodgrain print on the leather upper and a draftsman’s diagram of the chair imprinted on the insole. There’s also the Elephant Pack, inspired by Eames’ 1945 molded-plywood toy elephant. The pachyderm-inspired collection was designed for kids, featuring a detachable elephant head guarding the laces. It's accompanied by the Coloring Toy, named after the children’s play set introduced by Eames in 1955. The toy consisted of eight die-cut shapes that kids could color (crayons were included) and then attach to one another via butterfly clips to create an articulated creation. The Reebok sneaker replicates these silhouettes on the white leather upper, allowing wearers to color in the shapes as they like. Heck, even the box the sneakers come in riffs off the legendary Eames House in Los Angeles, a blockish rectangle of steel and glass with Mondrian-style varicolored panels. Now for the big question: Of all the partners a sneaker brand could sign with, why would Reebok bypass athletic-star licensing in favor of an eccentric design house that many Americans have probably never heard of? The Rosewood shoe boasts a woodgrain leather that evokes Eames' signature bent plywood. Competition breeds eccentricity There are several answers to that query. The first reason can be found by visiting any specialty sneaker store. Gaze out over the dizzying array of gym shoes by brands like Adidas, Nike and Converse. Notice how they're all decked out in endless array of materials, patterns, colorways and soles. New York’s Flight Club alone is said to have 4,000 different sneakers on offer. Want to stand out in that crowd? Good luck. In the never-ending quest to get noticed, then, sneaker brands have logically turned to creative partnerships with influencers and fashion designers. Last year alone, Chicago label Joe Freshgoods worked its streetwear magic on New Balance. Air Jordan gave creative license to singer-songwriter Billie Eilish. And luxe-street designer Kith used the fabric upper of Vans kicks as a canvas. Yet even this route has become familiar. A decision to move away from that trend essentially prompted Reebok to look beyond the pop and fashion realms to strike a deal with Eames. “Sportswear companies have been partnering with peculiar non-sneaker brands for years,” Reebok svp and gm for product Todd Krinsky told Adweek. “At Reebok, we’re always looking for ways to inject newness into the world of street culture collaborations. The space needs to be turned upside down.” As seemingly unrelated as a 1950s-era furniture maker might be to the realm of rubber soles, Krinsky added that creative collaborations no longer need to follow predicable trends. “Back in the day, it was all about athletes and music,” he said. “There are no boundaries now. Today, we scroll through social media and see people styling their sneaker content in new ways, with furniture and household items that show how they live and what they value. That’s where we find Eames—beyond common areas of inspiration.” Inspired by Eames decorative elephant for the home: the Elephant Pack sneaker Reebok is just being Reebok Another factor likely stems from Authentic Brands Group’s acquisition of Reebok from Adidas in March for a reported $2.5 billion. ABG’s stable includes some old-hat apparel labels like Hart Schaffner Marx and Frederick’s of Hollywood. It also has some rather troubled ones, including Forever 21 and Brooks Brothers, which both declared bankruptcy in 2020. Reebok, by contrast, does not appear to be among its brands requiring major surgery. In a statement released just after the acquisition, ABG founder and CEO Jamie Salter said his plan was “to let Reebok be Reebok.” Apparently, that means letting the brand out on a long leash to do what it deems necessary to, in the words of CMO Nick Woodhouse, retain “its position at the intersection of fashion, sports and culture.” So if chumming up with a somewhat obscure midcentury design firm is part of that intersection, management’s clearly not about to get in the way. After scrapping plans for an IPO late last year, ABG remains in private hands, and so Reebok’s 2022 fiscals aren’t disclosed. Reebok did post $1.5 billion in global sales in 2020, but those were a shadow of the nearly $3.8 billion it made as recently as 2005. Reebok clearly has to push the creative envelope a bit if it hopes to regain some of the cachet from back in the 1980s. That's when it turned heads by making sneakers out of leather and became the must-have shoe for that decade’s cultural craze, aerobics. Coloring Toy (r.) encourages the wearer to break out the markers and customize the shoe. Mass appeal? Probably not. The latest triplet of Reebok x Eames footwear—the Club C Monotone Pack debuted last summer, and the Club C Dot Pattern & Composition Pack appeared in March—will get a staged released throughout this month. So it’ll take some time to see how sneaker fans respond to it. The first release won praise from the likes of Architectural Digest: “We’ve been saying that furniture is the new flex in streetwear, but Reebok just took that concept to the next level.” But it’s still pretty easy to buy the shoes from the first two collections, months after they dropped, and that begs another important question: Aside from the cool colors and patterns that evoke Eames' designs, will the average sneaker fan … you know, get it? Allen Adamson, co-founder of consultancy Metaforce and adjunct professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, is not so sure. “Obviously, the strategy is that they're looking to anchor the sneakers' image in authenticity,” he said. “But this is almost a bridge too far between the authentic story and something that might be accessible to 96% of their audience.” On the other hand, Adamson said, the hyper-competitiveness and sheer number of choices in athletic shoes has nudged Reebok into pioneering territory, so the Eames partnership might not be as much of a stretch as it seems. “Authenticity becomes such a mission-critical concept for fashion brands that any backstory, even if it’s obscure, is worth trying,” he said. Beth Goldstein, fashion footwear and accessories analyst the NPD Group, added that Reebok x Eames is hardly the most far-out collaboration she’s seen. In 2020, she recalls, Crocs did a line of sandals with KFC that looked (and smelled) like fried chicken. “This partnership is about combining classic design from two iconic brands,” she said. “The brands are looking to attract a consumer that understands this, and know it won’t appeal to a broad audience.” Charles and Ray Eames were among the most influential designers of the 20th century. Asked whether a partnership with a highbrow and esoteric design house might be a bit too far flung for sneakerheads, Reebok’s Krinsky said the Eames line is “resonating with anyone who has a passion for design, art, architecture or sneakers. Will every consumer know who Eames is? No. But it’s through collaborations like this that consumers learn and gain new interests—and Reebok has the power to be a conduit for that growth.” Meanwhile, shoppers can land themselves a pair of Rosewood Reeboks for only $120. That’s $6,380 less than an Eames lounge chair and ottoman. It’s Official: Skinny Jeans Are Out, Wide-Leg Denim Is In

Fashion News

Reebok's New Sneakers Are Inspired by Midcentury Modern Eames Furniture. Here's Why.

In a segment awash with a million choices, competition breeds eccentricity

Robert Klara

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Robert Klara