July 6, 2022 |
The Women’s Euros kick off today in Manchester, and British design hero Martine Rose is celebrating with a campaign championing unsung heroes of the sports world. To mark the launch of the namesake label’s new Nike collab, the Shox MR4 – a reimagined take on the Shox silhouette, with a pointed toe and extended heel to resemble a mule dress shoe – Rose, her long term collaborator Tamara Rothstein and photographer Pascal Gambarte have rounded up nine women from across Europe in a bid to uplift women footballers, and bring the sport’s most prominent changemakers to mainstream attention.
Amongst the cast is Hope Powell, the first full time England Women coach and first Black England coach; highly-decorated Spanish footballer Marta Corredera; Ruth Ruano, the footballer and pilot who went viral for breastfeeding her daughter in the dugout; and Jasma, a Kicken ohne Grenzen footballer and schoolgirl who fled to Austria from Afghanistan.
Rose chose the Shox silhouette for its prominence in underground subcultures, particularly in the British grime scene. Available in black, white and a limited edition silver colourway for friends and family of the brand, you can shop the shoe on Rose’s e-store from tomorrow. “We feel the end product is so successful because it’s still recognisable as a Shox, it’s just slightly different,” says Shauni Douglas, Martine Rose’s design director. “It’s almost not until you put your feet into the shoe that you realise how significant the height difference is which is nice. We wanted to balance it so that it’s striking but not too extreme.”
The shoe is the first instalment of a wider capsule collection between Nike and Rose, coming later this year.
The collaboration follows The Lost Lionesses, a virtual experience launched last July to christen Nike x Rose’s official fan jersey for the Men’s Euros. The immersive project was inspired by a group of 14 English women, aged between 13 and 21, who traveled to Mexico City in 1971 to play in an international football tournament – a pinnacle moment in the history of the Beautiful Game.
Photography by Pascal Gambarte. Buy the Martine Rose x Nike Shox MR4 here from tomorrow.
