Nike has always been seen as one of the most innovative shoe, and clothing, brands ever since its arrival in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports. From the waffle bottom of the truly original Nikes, to the visible air bubble, to Shox, and the rest in between has led to the latest innovation, Flyknit. It is featured on shoes as simple as the Roshe, and now is being featured on high performance shoes like the Kobe 9 and many soccer cleats. The first shoe to feature the Flyknit technology was the Nike Trainer+, which was released in July of 2012. The original reason for creating the trainer was for the 2012 Olympics, they wanted to create a shoe that was light enough to not weigh down marathon runners, but strong enough to perform to the highest level possible. So really, what is the deal with Flyknit? Let’s dive in.

To begin, there will be three parts to this article: How Flyknit works, why Flyknit works, and the fun stuff of Flyknit. While some (including myself) believe that Flyknit is just at the beginning of what it could be, there is still a lot to talk about.

What most people don’t know is that Nike actually tried to do something just like Flyknit in the 80s, with a shoe called the Sock Racer; a mesh shoe that was in fact lightweight, but not durable at all. This is the difference between today’s Flyknit and the 80s Sock Racer; durability. The Flyknit material is extremely durable, if you have ever held a Flyknit shoe in your hand you know exactly what I am talking about; you can feel the lightness of the shoe, but if you pull and twist on it, it still is very durable. So how does this work?

Nike defines Flyknit as:

“With new Nike Flyknit technology, yarns and fabric variations are precisely engineered only where they are needed for a featherweight, formfitting and virtually seamless upper.” – Nike.com

But what does this really mean? Nike doesn’t tell us what this “special” yarn is (its synthetic yarn, we know Nike.), but what we do know is that the shoes are constructed from computers so they are said to be woven together in a way that is seamless and “close to perfect” by a knitting machine. The whole entire upper of (most) Flyknit shoes is constructed as one piece, which is then connected to the sole of the shoe. Throughout the midsole of the shoe, tiny synthetic cables are woven in to support the foot.

The process of creating the shoes is called “Micro-level Precision Engineering” which instructs the giant “knitting machine” to change the shoe if it needs more support in an area by adding more layers of yarn in that area. If you need a little more stretch in a reigon of the shoe, the machine can add Lycra-infused thread to the area to help with the stretching function of the shoe. Since the whole upper of the shoe is constructed of one piece (the tongue is not included in this, that is a separate piece) a Flyknit shoe has 35 LESS PIECES than the conventional Nike shoe, like an Air Pegasus. Not only does this make the Flyknit light, durable, and comfortable to wear, but it makes producing the shoe extremely cheap compared to the conventional Nike shoe.

And for you green freaks out there, each Flyknit shoe produced only produces 1/100th of a pound of waste. Incredible.

If I had to make a prediction (Fine, I guess I can) every single Nike shoe will feature Flyknit within five years. It is cheap for them to make, consumers absolutely love it (we will talk about this later), and they can charge whatever they want because no other brand is doing this right now.

So why does Flyknit work? It is expensive! Not enough support! Ugly! Its a fad!

Doesn’t matter.

No matter what the product is, shoes, hats, shirts, socks, underwear, basketballs, bats, ANYTHING; you slap a Nike logo on there and people go crazy. Nike has some of the strongest brand support in the whole entire world, thousands of people live and die by Nike, and their customer base at this point stays winning.

Also, it doesn’t hurt that this stuff actually works! Believe it or not, Flyknit works; it is extremely efficient and Nike has proved this to us in one simple way: their athletes. LeBron, Kobe, KD, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Rodger Federer, CR7, Rory, all wear Nike, all the time. They wear Flyknit, and they are the top of the world in their respective sports. How can you deny that this new Nike technology works when the best use it? You can’t.

Oh, yeah. It doesn’t hurt that no other brand has anything like this. I’m not here to bash anyone else, but that should be added in there.

Now, the fun stuff. The colorways, the shoe models, the rumors and all of the other good stuff.

The Flyknit material allows for the shoes that they are featured on to have some wild colorways, and we have seen an abundance of sweet colorways. From the simplest black on white featured on Frees to the very sought after multicolor Racers, there is a colorway for everyone. One of the coolest colorways to release was the “Random Yarn” Roshe Run. With this model, they took the to be recycled material and created Roshe Runs, which each individual shoe was unique. If you were to get a pair, your left and right shoe would be different, which isn’t something that consumers would normally want, but they loved here. The Roshe run flyknit was just recently introduced this year, but it has already become one of the most popular Flyknit models. Earlier this year, the trophy pack Flyknit Chukka released, which was another colorways that people went crazy over; it released with a matching Roshe Run (not Flyknit though…)

There has been one mentionable collaboration of recent memory with Flyknit, and that was the Supreme x Nike Lunar Flyknit. It wasn’t as popular as other Supreme collaborations, but still dope nonetheless.

Another important thing to mention about Flyknit in general is the NikeID options. Now with the Kobe 9 Low, Free 4.0, Free Hybrid 5.0, Lunar2, Magista Opus, Magista Obra, and Mecurial Superfly, there are many options with many colorways to make your own Flyknit come to life. I’ll wait to get my hands on FlyknitID until the Roshe Run is on there…

So we know what they look like, and I hope I have provided enough information to you to assume what it is like to wear a Flyknit shoe if you never have before, but don’t take my word for it; here is what reddit had to say:

“Nike Flyknits are both aesthetically as well as comfortably pleasing.” – Reddit user someonelikegod “They fit like a glove, look awesome and are comfortable.” – Reddit user Firegivesme “I am a huge fan of Nike Flyknits. I think the flyknit tech is one of the best things to happen to sneakers in recent years. The complexity of the knit has a very appealing visual quality to it in person that cannot be replicated by a print, mostly due to the fact that it is more of texture. In terms of comfort, the material is a technical textile. It molds and slightly stretches to the shape of your foot, and creates a really nice fit almost immediately. I think the most comfortable pair of Flyknits that I own are the Flyknit Lunar2. I went true-to-size when buying them, and they are light and hardly noticeable on the feet. The lunar sole is amazingly comfortable, too. I’d be curious to measure them up against a pair of the adidas primeknit boosts, as I’ve heard those are also pretty wonderful.” – Reddit user MrScanman “Extremely comfortable, kinda goofy looking.” – rnally

So if you haven’t picked up on it yet… You will not be uncomfortable in a Flyknit shoe.

So what is the ultimate goal of Flyknit? Well, no one knows at this point. One could dream of going into a Nike store in the future, having your foot scanned and then getting a unique shoe produced for your foot only. This is something we can hope for in the future, but for now we can only hope for lighter, stronger, and (please) more collaborations. Until then, I will leave you with this…

“We are just scratching the surface of the potential of Nike Flyknit” – Mark Parker, President & CEO of Nike, Inc. (Nike.com)

Header image: https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7367/9692321147_7045551517_b.jpg Image #2: http://images.bwbx.io/cms/2012-03-15/comp_nike12__01__630x420.jpg Image #3: http://sneakernews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/lebron-james-nike-flyknit-trainer-volt-2.jpg Image #4: http://www2.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Cristiano+Ronaldo+Germany+v+Portugal+Group+AwKx9tXoO19l.jpg Image #5: http://cdn.nikeblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Nike-Flyknit-Roshe-Run-RANDOM-YARN-COLOR-1.jpg