Nike is expanding its offering from the avant-garde designer — and CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund winner — Melitta Baumeister.
The German-born designer, who won the award in 2023, last year effectively merged the worlds of performance and high fashion by reimagining Nike’s Vomero Premium and Pegasus Premium sneakers.
Now Baumeister, who is known for her sculptural approach to design, has turned her attention to apparel for Nike as well.
The new collection consists of a puffer coat, track jacket, track pant and tabi socks as well as another sneaker, the Rift Rocker.
To unveil the collection Thursday, the duo took over a space in TriBeCa and staged a performance with actors and athletes intended to speak to Baumeister’s process creating the new collection. The designer uses clay to mold and shape her line’s sculptural silhouettes. As she writes on her website: “You bring the body, we bring the shape.”
The actors interacted with clay during the presentation, building large feet, hands and noses before turning the stage over to athletes who wore the brand and gyrated around the space and performed gymnastics-style moves on a rack.
Baumeister said she was first approached by Nike before her spring 2025 show, where she previewed the sneakers.
“That was the first time we worked together,” she said. “They were supporting the show, which was quite athletic focused, and they supported the vision by offering me to do a colorway of the Vomero Premium and the Pegasus Premium. Then we were asked to do an original design head to toe.”
She said the creation of the apparel was “even more exciting than working on color, because we could really bring our forms and shapes of the clothing into the picture.”
The puffer is reversible and features removable sleeves and collar, along with a hidden banana shaped insert, attached with an elastic strap, that holds a tote bag. Baumeister said Nike doesn’t usually offer accessories and apparel together, “but if you attach it to the garment, it counts.”
The track jacket is loose with a detachable ribbed balaclava — a signature of the Melitta Baumeister collection — and a custom molded clay swoosh on the back of the neck. It’s solid on one side and printed on the reverse.
The track pants are designed to complement the footwear and include a detachable clay-molded carabiner with the designer’s special keyring in the shape of a nose.
“It was important to me to put in a lot of details so it would feel like a high-end Nike product,” she said. That included adding boning to the pants, which she acknowledged is “very untraditional,” along with a warped zipper to reference movement.
The split-toe tabi socks are intended to work with the Rift Rocker shoes, which also feature a split-toe silhouette with a distressed leather upper and chunky rocker sole inspired by sculpted clay.
“The Nike Rift has such a unique history and distinct relationship to the foot, so I wanted to exaggerate that even further with the Rift Rocker,” Baumeister said. “The sculpted sole gives it a completely different presence, almost like the shoe has been molded into form. We carried that same approach into the apparel through exaggerated volume, modular construction and details that allow the pieces to transform on the body.”
She added that the Rift “is such a signature style for Nike, but it’s also very much a fashion shoe. Sneakers often just look like they come out of a 3D printer so I really wanted to bring back the feeling that everything is put together by hands.”
The Nike x Melitta Baumeister collection will be available on the designer’s site first on Nov. 5 followed by Snkrs, the Nike Lab stores in Paris and Shanghai, at Dover Street Market and select retail partners on Nov. 12.
Baumeister said she’s hoping to continue to work with Nike in the future. “They gave me such a big space to play and experiment and bring a vision that is artistic but still has lots to do with athleticism and fashion. It’s really been a joy working together.”