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🤔 Nike & Tom Sachs Confusion

🤔 Nike & Tom Sachs Confusion

The Nike x Tom Sachs General Purpose Shoe was hot before Tom Sachs came under a ton of fire for controversy surround his treatment of his studio assistants. Now, a new colorway of the shoe has been leaked, but Nike says that they don't plan to release more Tom Sachs sneakers. It's confusing, let me explain 📝 (2 min read)

Thomas Beddall, Mike Kaufman & Justin Schnell
September 20, 2023

Photo by Christian Charisius/picture alliance via Getty Images

Tom Sachs x Nike

Just when I thought he was out, they pull him back in. A new colorway of the Tom Sachs General Purpose Shoe has re-appeared, but has the sneaker world very confused 🤔

Nike may have forgiven Tom Sachs, as a new colorway of the General Purpose Shoe has just surfaced via official images.
— Sneaker News (@SneakerNews)
3:31 PM • Sep 19, 2023

For context, Tom Sachs came under a ton of fire this past year for controversy surrounding his treatment of his studio assistants. Basically, Tom has been accused of running a small cult in his studio, where his assistants are treated badly and must adhere to an extremely rigid diet/lifestyle. Tom Sachs is on some mad genius/evil genius flow, and sadly things got a little out of hand. Read this for the full picture 👇

Who Is the Bad Art Boss?

Tom Sachs made an art career on casual shock value and relationships with luxury brands. Now he’s under attack for what employees say was an abusive studio environment.

www.nytimes.com/2023/03/24/nyregion/tom-sachs-nike.html

This is where it gets confusing though. Nike released a statement condemning his behavior and seemingly halted production on his Nike Tom Sachs GPS, but yet we’re still seeing leaks of a new colorway. If I had to guess, these won’t actually be released 😶

Nike has no plans to release more Tom Sachs sneakers at this time—no GPS or Mars Yard 3.0, per a source at Nike.
— Complex Sneakers (@ComplexSneakers)
7:39 PM • Sep 19, 2023

From a strictly stylistic perspective, I love all the Tom Sachs Nike shoes, and I think the Mars Yards 2.0 are some of the best of all time…if you have a couple grand lying around. I was a big fan of the beige GPS and even copped the brown ones when they came out. Not a big fan of this white and yellow colorway, and obviously don’t support Mr. Sachs overall as a human 👎

Tom Sachs Nike GPS "Brown" 👣
— Nice Kicks (@nicekicks)
5:00 PM • Feb 6, 2023

Personally, I don’t condone treating your employees poorly, but I also feel like these people knew what they were signing up for when they applied to work in his studio. Here are my two takeaways: Tom Sachs, just be a better person. People who work for Tom Sachs or aspire to, maybe just don’t. And also, who leaked these photos!? That’s the missing piece to the puzzle 🤷🏽‍♂️