How to Make the World's Best Sneaker? We Asked ASICS and HAGEL
Studio HAGEL creative director Mathieu Hagelaars was in a Parisian hotel shower when he got the call from ASICS to design its latest sneaker. It had been a tiring Fashion Week, and the HAGEL team had hardly recuperated—but their excitement for the project was by no means muted. ASICS is a brand that is famously protective over their design process. But now, the sportswear giant “wanted a partner who could aesthetically innovate but also technologically innovate.” For HAGEL then, as for the rest of the world now, this was big news.
That’s the not-so-villainous origin story of the new ASICS NEOCURVE, told to me by Tim Nikken with a characteristic grin. We’re sitting in HAGEL’s Amsterdam studio, along with the other three members of the team. There’s Mathieu, HAGEL’s creative director; Imke Nijst, the key sneaker designer; Ine van den Elsen, the key art director; and Tim, the commercial director. A few NEOCURVEs, as of yet top secret, are sitting very pretty around the studio. And with ASICS archive research boards pinned up around the room, the space feels like a kind of shrine to the Japanese brand. It’s a cozy setup, and a sneakerhead’s dream.
ASICS’ prestige hardly needs introduction, but there’s a chance you don’t know HAGEL. Founded in 2015, HAGEL is famed in the industry for being one of the most forward-thinking sneaker customisers out there. Initially gaining attention from their viral series ‘Makers Mondays’, which reserved the first day of the week for making the craziest, most DIY sneaker customisations, they’ve gone on to create bespoke, avant-garde designs for brands like Off-White, Moncler, Valentino, and Moon Boot. They might be relative newcomers, but there aren’t many doing it like them.
HAGEL come up with and execute ideas at lightning speed, pioneering ingenious DIY workarounds to solve problems down the line. All four are serious risk-takers, and ASICS was ready to take the leap with them. When I ask if there was ever a project that took things truly to the wire, the response is uproarious: the team reminisce about an “Olympic race”-like overnight scramble to get a batch of nearly-failed sneakers from baking in an Amsterdam oven to a Botter runway in Paris the same day; or when they had to totally rework a shoe at the last second because they’d bought the Netherlands’ entire stock of a rare material they were using. Thankfully, the ASICS collaboration yielded no such hiccups, but the result is just as mesmerizing.
It’s experiences like those that make the HAGEL team so close, and their work so outstanding. They’re not afraid to laugh at themselves, they play to each of their strengths and weaknesses, and they know each other inside and out. Speaking of which: Matthieu’s stomach aches are notorious in the studio. “When I have a stomach ache,” the creative director laughs, “there’s always something good in the pipeline.”
One can only imagine, then, the monstrous gastrointestinal difficulties which must have preceded the making of the new ASICS NEOCURVE. The NEOCURVE started life not as a sports style shoe, but as a bog-standard trainer—function, rather than looks, was the priority. From there, the team blended their favorite ASICS archive silhouettes with their own “fascinations”. Salt flat racing, ice hockey masks, and general sports aesthetics informed the finishes, and a classic ASICS shape carved the base.
But the real achievement of the NEOCURVE, the one that you’ll hear about the most, is its sustainability. The shoe is made entirely from grinded up footwear, deadstock, and defective shoes—but it doesn’t shout about it. Mathieu explains: “It’s a super sustainable technique [ASICS] are now using, but it shouldn’t look like it’s a super sustainable product. It should just look like a cool product.” And so it does: that unusually curved shape would stand out on any shelf, and its cool-toned colors match its slick design. For syncing tech specs with the utmost taste, this sneaker is king.
The NEOCURVE might have dropped, it might be a roaring success, but neither HAGEL nor ASICS will be reveling in the moment for too long. For them, design is always an ongoing process—a game, as all members of the studio describe it, of sartorial ping-pong. Declaring a sneaker finished is difficult for people who would love to design sneakers forever. But sometimes, Imke says, “there’s also sort of a moment where we feel, okay, this is super strong. And you just know it, in a way.”
This is how you make, and continue to make, the world’s most innovative sneakers. For ASICS, as for HAGEL, it’s onto the next.
You can shop the NEOCURVE on ASICS' website here.
