TAKE IT TO THE STREETS
On the second Asics Tiger Brand Day in Singapore, youth culture and street lifestyle reign.
Inside the Red Dot Traffic Building, a conserved heritage landmark along Singapore’s Maxwell Road noticeable for its bright red paint, is The Red Dot Design Museum, now permanently closed to make room for the triple-expansion of its next door neighbor, Singapore’s international arbitration center Maxwell Chambers. Unlike what this would signify in Manila, in Singapore, the expansion won’t tear down but build around the structure. The city-state is fostering a creative culture where heritage is essential and it shows no signs of slowing down. There’s a lot of room for creatives in different fields.
On the final event held within Red Dot’s ‘20s-era high-ceilinged interiors, sports lifestyle shoe brand Asics Tiger gathers Singapore’s street lifestyle influencers from the arts to entertainment worlds and some of the region’s top sneakerheads in the second installment of Asics Brand Day. The event concept premiered in Bangkok, Thailand.
“Creativity is where innovation and technology comes from, and with that innovation comes the creativity needed to make it a part of lifestyle, especially street lifestyle,” Asics Asia general manager Yogesh Gandhi tells YStyle.
Founded in 1949 by Kihachiro Onitsuka, who thought of contributing to the sports industry in order to revive the youth, Onitsuka initially focused on basketball footwear under his namesake brand Onitsuka Tiger until the brand expanded to cater to a wide range of Olympic sports in the ‘70s; he formed Asics Tiger in 1977. Their Gel technology released in 1986 is a cornerstone of the brand’s running sneakers, which include the Gel-Lyte III, the Gel-Lyte V and the Gel Kayano.
Entering Asics Brand Day in Singapore, an extended console is transformed into an exaggeration of a shoe designer’s workshop desk, mimicking perhaps the collective Asics Tiger design team’s drawing board, informing us of the creative process that went into conceptualizing the latest drops from the brand. But upon closer inspection, it is actually a replication of some of the original sketches, this area being a simulation of a work in progress that spans decades, including the brand’s most successful and iconic release, the Gel Kayano Trainer.
Proving its status as a classic through versatility is a gallery of all their retailer collaborations in 2015 to celebrate their 25th anniversary. Notable ones included one with Paris premium retailer Colette in 2015 with their take on the Gel Lyte III, dotting the entire shoe in their signature blue-with-white and white-with-blue paneling; and the same model in collaboration with London indie store Footpatrol, also out in 2015, inspired by the original Footpatrol gas mask logo (you’ll see it when you look at the shoe from above).
“Our street lifestyle approach and collaborating with our retailers isn’t just us jumping on a trend. They are part of the DNA of our company. That’s what differentiates us from other brands,” Asics Tiger Asia marketing director Kenji Oh points out.
“The process for these collaborations begins from when we first look for a retailer to partner with. We look for like-minded people with an influence on street lifestyle. These collaborations have worked for us because it is through them that we learned more about our customers and how we in turn connect with our consumers,” shares Gandhi.
“When I say ‘street lifestyle,’ there is a technology associated with us, and with the new age, it has taken a new shift. We are largely coming out of the ‘80s to the ‘90s. That was the power age of Japan also, when it started to become famous for its technology. That’s when we came out with the product differentiating us from the running shoe. We want to be the brand that the young people wear when they are going about their life,” he adds.
The event highlight is the unveiling of the Gel-Kayano Trainer Knit, an update of the original Gel-Kayano Trainer, from which a lot of the brand’s design heritage sprang when it was first released in 1993. The update is a standard low-top and mid-top silhouette but, just like the original, it also has a stretch knit fabric on the upper.
Over 60 shoes from the Asics Tiger spring/summer line and a preview of their autumn/winter offerings were also showcased. The same strong heritage is in the new GelLyte III and Gel-Lyte V as well as Asics Tiger’s first women’sonly shoes, the all-new Gel-Lyte Komachi.
Asics Brand Day also saw a culmination of the Sneaker Battle, where after weeks of an Instagram popularity contest, attendees of the event voted for their preferred photo at designated voting booths.
“From a fashion standpoint, there’s more of a street lifestyle in the Philippines. Singapore is very casual to some extent,” compares Gandhi. To give Singaporeans an idea is a digital campaign marked by a photo gallery of six Singaporean influencers modeling their favorite Asics Tiger pair: photographer and model Estelle Shing; card flourisher and co-founder of Virtuoso Huron Low; rapper Omar Amir aka OmarKenobi; R&B singer Sam Rui; dancer Steph Leong; and street photographer Tim Suen. He hints at the possibility of a Manila leg of this event. “Getting to know our customers in this setting, we are thinking of taking this around Southeast Asia.”
“When we talk about sneakers, we also have to talk about sports. In Singapore, and even Thailand, soccer and running are the bigger sports; in Southeast Asia, there’s the Philippines, where nowhere else is basketball so popular outside of the United States. Running is catching up, followed by lifestyle wear,” Gandhi compares, noting how Manila’s style setters wear their sneakers from day to night. “This makes Manila unique for us. It’s a challenge with a lot of potential.”
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