Chinese New Year doesn’t only mark a new beginning for the Chinese, but it also determines the force of cosmic influence on one’s life and the world, and is laden with historical and cultural meaning. For the past nine years, Nike has stayed culturally relevant and celebrated the Chinese New Year with commemorative models. This year, to mark the beginning of the year of the tiger, Nike has reworked the classic Cortez.

Drawing inspiration from the rare white Bengal tiger, Nike has crafted the Cortez into a white tonal number mixing pony hair on the Swoosh, lace, heel and toe panels, with matching white tonal tiger stripe print on the rest of the shoe. Other relevant Chinese New Year details also come into play. An auspicious red trimming lines the tongue and ankle on one shoe (the other remains white), and the leather tongue tag is embossed simply with the character “?”, meaning Tiger in Chinese. On the reverse side of the underside of the tongue, “??” (safety and peace) is printed as a New Year’s greeting and prayer. Black tonal tiger stripe laces top off the Cortez on a felicific note.

200 pairs of these Year of the Tiger Cortez come packaged in a specially designed shoe box featuring five tiny red holes, as if a tiger couldn’t wait to rip open the shoe box and sunk its claws into these fresh kicks. The shoes will be available at select Nike retailers in February, but before that, a matching hoodie will be released in January.

Read the rest of: Nike Cortez - Year of the Tiger

© Emily for Freshness Mag, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
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