Our interview with Tinker Hatfield for the new Nike HyperAdapt 1.0

To find out how the Nike HyperAdapt 1.0 is made, try them out and chat with Tinker Hatfield in person, we were invited to London.
Together with us, the tape artist No Curves called to create an artwork that reinterprets the model.

The event is held at the Nike Town in Oxford Circus. A small dark room on the third floor characterized by blue neon lights and a sci-fi atmosphere. In the middle of the room the inscription “Step Into the Future“.

After a few moments of preparation they bring us the shoes. As soon as you stand up, the heel activates a sensor that automatically tightens the system, while two side buttons help tighten and enlargen to adjust it. They are light and with a sinuous silhouette, despite a battery and the motor for connection in the middle of the sole.

Tinker then arrives and the atmosphere becomes solemn. We have half an hour to know everything about the shoes. Time passes fast, as when you’re with a friend who you haven’t seen for a long time.

He tells us that for the shoe design he was inspired by Eve, the robot of Pixar Wall-E, sinuous, feminine, soft and sensual, her blue lights. The shoe has a battery, a life, reacts to the interaction with the body.

“What about a shoe that would essentially come alive when you put it on? It would sense you. It would become the shape of your foot, and when it came alive it would light up. Wouldn’t it be great if shoes could do that?”

The path, he tells us, has seen 28 years of brainstorming and 11 years of research and development, many false warnings, delays and deadlines, the defeat of internal scepticism and countless prototypes. The company was calling the “adaptive fit” technology.

“I’m more excited about this than any project I’ve ever been involved with.”.

The basic idea stems from the desire to strengthen athletes’ abilities and protect their bodies: “The athletes’ feets are ruined,” says Hatfield,”if the feet are not healthy, there is a chain reaction and the whole body loses its balance.”

Speaking of basketball, Tinker continued saying that a HyperAdapt 2.0 is still under development and Nike doesn’t know exactly when it will be completed:

“There is a 2.0, and it’s specific to basketball. And we think it’s going to be one of the best basketball shoes ever.”

What is certain is that the HyperAdapt 1.0 have officially arrived in Europe and that from 29 September they will be presented with a starting price of 706 euro on the SNKRS App.

Not a lot for a small step into the future.