THE PIN STRIPE.

Here is a little story about how a functional feature became slowly a stylistic advantage: the pin stripe. 

This yellow stripe just under the MIZUNO Sky Road upper has had a function of either soften the foot bed for comfort or harden the footbed for enhanced performance or stability.

From the early 60's to the late 80's athletic shoes were fitted with different harness / materials in order to give the athlete the best of cushioning combination. 

Sometimes, due to technology choices the midsole separation was mandatory: Nike air wedge had to be surrounded by a PU foam. the Pegasus GX and the Windrunner are the reason why the midsoles are horizontally splitted.

Excepted few products made out of PU foam and mostly painted in order to avoid the yellowing effects (air Stab and heel part of the pegasus), The 90's offered pretty much plain white compressed molded EVA unpainted. 

One of the first disturbance arrived with the Nike air Talaria designed by Tinker Hatfield and team. This products offered a bunch of novelties in the footwear industry back to 1997. In this case we just have a look at the EVA sole. It shows two painted areas that link visually the upper to the midsole as if the products makes one discontinued graphic story. This is maybe the very first example of 2 distinctive colors set by painting over an EVA sole. 

We ended the first decade of 2000's with THE TREND. 

The New century questioned the white foams and the perceptible thickness, in a world looking for shoes visually closer to the ground while offering the same beneficial cushioning. 

2000's are also the year of the injected EVA Democracy. One foam, few drop-in techs and no external values. Thats maybe the reason of the creation of the HOLY painted pin stripe.

During my really small contribution to the Adidas Boost design exploration, I came up with this study. We realize the power of this TREND across all major actors of the field. 

We also guessed the end of the common EVA era and the beginning of the new foam tech Era started by nike and the Lunar foam.

Working for the Boost project, We questioned the reason the why we had to follow this path for the upcoming introduction. The first Boost generation did follow THE pin stripe TREND, the second generation of boost happily celebrated the return of the decomplexed full foam.

We are in 2016 now, New technologies are the reason to assume foam with plain color and verticality again because the benefice isn't visual-first anymore its all about EXPERIENCE.

2016 celebrate also the return of the color blocking or the color blocking that are more radical and graphic. The link isn't function driven first, it is almost fashion or industrial product oriented. I see this blocking alternative as a micro trend manifesto.

It looks like THE pin stripe TREND is slowly left for other manufacture solutions such as the algorythmic ornaments or the lazer engraved finished products turned into faded colors and degradés. In that case, we are at the beginning of a new trend that tends to Marry the function and the mathematic surfacing to new tech manufactures. 

I would really consider this direction as the next BIG thing in footwear. just look at the demand for Generative designers and engineers across the profession.