How Hymne’s Jide Osifeso Reimagined Reebok’s Classic Nylon Plus and Club C Sneakers
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Although Reebok’s latest collaboration is its first time working with Hymne, a designed studio based out of Los Angeles that is pronounced “him,” the footwear brand has a history with the founder.
Before month’s end, the athletic and sportswear brand will deliver a two-shoe collaboration with Hymne, which was founded in 2016 by Jide Osifeso. Osifeso joined Reebok in 2020 and has contributed to several of its creative efforts, including contributing to the direction of the “CrateMaster” film in 2021 and directing the “Life is Not a Spectator Sport” campaign in 2022.
“This collaboration offered familiarity in terms me being close friends with a lot of people that work here and having history here, but also my history as a child wearing Reebok shoes and being obsessed with Allen Iverson. It’s a dream to be able to partner with the brand and have a relationship with a company from a product standpoint,” Osifeso told FN. “Reebok offers a lot of flexibility and freedom to people that they collaborate with. They really believe in the people they bring into the family from a product standpoint and allow them to do their thing, which is not super common.”
With years of creating for others, Osifeso told FN that his Hymne imprint “the purest form” of his design and thoughts, and it merges high quality materials with subversive culture and modern craftsmanship. For Hymne’s first project with Reebok, it reimagined the Classic Nylon Plus and Club C sneakers.
“Personally, outside of the Question, those are the two shoes that I think embody what Reebok is as a brand,” Osifeso said. “The first thought was to try to do something from the ground up, but it didn’t feel right. And so I wanted to impress a different type of design sensibility on canvases that already are inherently identifiable as Reebok shoes.”
The highlight of the collection’s Classic Nylon Plus is its rebuilt upper, which was designed with a knit base for the first time. The look also features extruding molded foam elements, which Reebok said in a statement that “form a non-conventional, disproportionate shape representative of many Hymne pieces.”
“The designer that I worked with [on this collaboration], Michael Hesterberg, is someone I met 15 years ago working at Adidas. At that time, it was the genesis of Flyknit, Primeknit — it was knit everything,” Osifeso said. “We were always geeking on that stuff back in the day, so when we were talking about this shoe, we were figuring out what to use as the base for the upper and it was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we made it knit? We’ve never done it before, let’s see if it would work.'”
He continued, “Sample after sample, we figured out the right kind of technique for it and if it would even fit with the kind of components that we wanted to add to it. It made a lot of sense for the younger version of ourselves. It was a cool thing to do that, and it also worked from an aesthetics standpoint.”
As for the Club C, Osifeso and Hymne iteration stripped the shoe down and rebuilt the look with a leather and suede on the uppers, and added the same molded foam elements from the Classic Nylon Plus.
“I really wanted to focus on the proportions of the shoes, and the silhouettes of the shoes. When I see shoes, there could be a minor difference in terms of the height of the sole or whatever that can make me like or love a shoe,” Osifeso said. “The toe box area, I always wanted to see it a little bit higher. I wanted to get there with a knit base, and I thought maybe it could be flat, but adding that neoprene padding where we did gave it the perfect proportions for me. When you put the shoe on, it’s exactly how I want a Classic Nylon or Classic Leather to fit.
To tell the collection’s story of rebuilding and structural re-creation., Osifeso conceptualized a campaign within a home remodeling environment, replete with partially framed walls, exposed insulation, plastic drop cloths and more.
“I like the thought of home, literally and figuratively. While we were shooting this, I was remodeling my home. A photographer named Ryan Moraga shot it, who I’ve known my whole life. When we were thinking about locations, we looked at different homes we could rent and I was like, ‘Want to come to my house and see how it looks, maybe it could be a vibe?’ He came over, he was like, ‘This is it, we should just shoot it here,'” Osifeso explained. “Building the vision, building a home, literally or figuratively, there’s some harmony there in those two kinds of thoughts. It fit perfectly, and I think it looks pretty cool to have the exposed drywall and all the tape left out. There was no set design at all.”
The Hymne x Reebok footwear collection for spring 2024 arrives May 28 exclusively via Hymnestudio.com. What’s more, Reebok and Hymne confirmed this is the first installment in an ongoing collaboration between the brands.
“This is going to be an ongoing project. The next iteration of the partnership will come out in November, and that will be footwear and apparel. Much more to come,” Osifeso said. “It will be quite the expansion of what this is now, and it will be a nice one.
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About the Author
Peter Verry is the Senior News and Features Editor for Athletic and Outdoor at Footwear News. He oversees coverage of the two fast-paced and ultracompetitive markets, which includes conducting in-depth interviews with industry leaders and writing stories on sneakers and outdoor shoes. He is a lifelong sneaker addict (and shares his newest purchases via @peterverry on Instagram) and spends most of his free time on a trail. He holds an M.A. in journalism from Hofstra University and can be reached at peter.verry@footwearnews.com.