The artist now known as Ye continues to move the footwear needle. Get the details on the laceless edition of the Adidas Yeezy 700 MNVN “Phosphor.”
“Have you ever had shoes without shoe strings?”
In 2009, Ye (then acknowledged as Kanye West) posed this question to the world on Jay-Z’s “Run This Town.” The teaser for The Blueprint 3 featured Rihanna and was blessed by a beat and verse from West himself. While the inquiry felt trivial, the timing was wild. The summer single hit in the midst of Kanye’s Nike Air Yeezy 1 colorways coming to retail and Louis Vuitton launches landing in stores.
As the song was climbing the charts, Kanye’s cosmic sneaker ascent crescendoed in Timberlands at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
Get on our list for weekly sports business, industry trends, interviews, and more.
Following months of seclusion, rap camp in Hawaii, and a comeback classic, Kanye’s career caught a second wind with compilation albums, another Nike Air Yeezy silo, and his abrasive album, Yeezus. Around that time, West went from Nike to Adidas, breaking barriers in sportswear to what’s now become his own billion-dollar brand. While creative and contractual boundaries have presented a bevy of battles for Kanye over the years, one obstacle continues to cross his path.
Shoelaces.
Through sandals, Foam Runners, and unreleased Scuba Shoes, Ye has sought to make sneakers wearable and functional with the same defiance felt by Run-DMC in the ’80s. Today, he makes another step forward with a preview of the Adidas Yeezy 700 MNVN “Phosphor” sans strings.
First featured on Kanye’s feet in the Fall of 2018, the MNVN model has released at retail numerous times in an array of colorways. Backward branding in reflective fashion added ’90s sportswear steeze to the dad shoe don dada, built atop the 700 sole that’s scored the whole series. According to Hypebeast, this “Phosphor” foray will release at retail in the coming months.
Early looks from @dondasplace provide a lateral view, leaving the imagination to guess what the tongue and toe-down closure system actually appears as. Just how has Kanye made shoe strings irrelevant on his latest launch? We’ll soon find out.
