Exhibitions as monumental as the Genealogy of Innovation don’t just happen without an inordinate amount of lengthy discussion and hard work, followed by protracted negotiations and infinite fine-tuning. Selecting the finest 200 Nikes to have graced the planet is a tough gig, one that calls for a razor-sharp mind, an encyclopaedic knowledge of Nike history and an OCD-like attention to detail. With an impeccable background in the quasi-journalistic art of sneaker criticism, including many a fine article for Sneaker Freaker magazine, Gary Warnett was drafted in to curate and document the exhibition. Enjoy his guided tour of the Genealogy of Innovation.

First of all, let me ask an abstract question. What do you think makes Nike, Nike?

Well, that question makes a lot of sense if we’re talking football. Speaking from a shoe fanatic standpoint, we all know the differentiators that make each brand appeal. For me it would be a sense of rebellion, in terms of colour, design and technology. There’s an irreverence in the mix, but not an the expense of performance. It was the upstart brand and football boots are a perfect example of demonstrating Nike’s quest to find that sweet spot themselves. Does 1971’s The Nike represent the essence of the brand? Nope. The 1984 Tiempo is still very traditional in a lot of ways. The early 1990s boots like the Tiempo Premier and Air Play are a leap in the right direction, but it’s really the GX in 1997 that’s the playmaker, then the Mercurial the following year which delivers a truly ‘Nike’ design for the pitch. You could trace what makes the Mercurial great all the way back to Bill Bowerman chipping, slicing, glueing and carving spikes and distance runners in cahoots with Jeff Johnson back when Nike was in its infancy. Back when the Mercurial dropped, Nike was still young – it was only 27 years old. The headstart that other great football brands had was colossal. But I think that there’s a number of interesting elements in the football shoes that precede the Mercurial that deserve documentation. That we could link the Mercurial to a nylon Cortez without it being too tenuous is what makes Nike, Nike in a number of ways.

Critics often talk of Nike as a ‘marketing’ company. I would have thought this book illustrates that Nike is a design company that loves ideas more than anything. How do you feel about the dichotomy between these viewpoints?

Nike’s marketing led me to the path I chose in life for work so I’ll never knock it. W+K’s work, Peter Moore’s work, those ads, the copywriting… amazing. But it’s a critique I’ve heard a lot of from those who don’t necessary follow the product and would rather have a general quip in their conversational armoury, even if it lacks substance. Nike don’t skimp on marketing and they’re committed to innovation, so that seems like the best of both worlds to me. With football product from Nike, marketing was very thin on the ground compared to running or basketball up until the early 1990s – there were some weird little Nike UK ads I love, like an ad with Ian Botham for the Tiempo that played on his football past. I know as an Aussie that you know abut Botham! There was even Nike sponsorship back when the Air Strike dropped that tied with the British comic known as Roy of the Rovers. Football can be resistant to American modes of marketing, so it was a challenge for Nike in both promotion and product design.

The Genealogy exhibition is 40 years of Nike innovation told through over 200 interconnected footwear designs. But the football boot story has rarely, if ever, been told on this scale, and certainly never in conjunction with Nike’s pantheon of sneaker designs. How did this mix strike you when you saw it for the first time?

I was tasked with picking the shoes, so the mix and the timelines were on me anyway. You don’t hear the football boot story, and I wish I could have included the Air Fire, the cleated incarnations of the Air Strikes, the late 1980s Firenzas and the Eurostrike with the heel lettering, so it was fun to try to gather that as a collection. Bear in mind that a lot of these shoes were collated with multiple timelines in mind too – a lot of the lightweight nylon and mesh runners of the 1970s belong in the material category as well as cushioning and lightweight.

Any surprises?

The real surprise for me was the amount of seemingly obscure running shoes that really broke ground technically that nobody discusses. I forgot that Zoom Air/Tensile Air actually debuted in loafers and work shoes half a decade before it appeared in sports footwear.