Caitlin Clark was featured as the cover athlete of SLAM KICKS 29, where she is shown carrying multiple colorways of her signature shoes, the Nike Caitlin 1.
Clark joined SLAM to promote her upcoming shoe release and to share some of the steps behind the creative process of designing her personalized footwear.
While the Caitlin 1 design features countless references to Clark’s past and present, one of the most distinctive elements is Nike Opticast technology, which shaped cast polyurethane nodes into “CC” and “22.”
“This was probably my favorite part of the design process, and I was very particular when we were going through this. Like, I wanted it to kind of be an Easter egg when the consumer gets this out of the box. They realize, like, this whole Opticast is made up of little Cs on this (lateral) side and then little twos on this (medial) side, and I think it comes to life really well. And then you kind of have this ripple effect, which is really cool. I think it just brings the shoe to life,” Clark said.
When asked what differentiates her shoes, Clark said they were tailored specifically to how she moves on the court and how she plays the game of basketball.
“I think it’s probably the feel of the shoe. When you put this on, I wanted a ton of support in the front of my foot. And so there’s an airbag up here. And I think for somebody that’s always cutting a lot and trying to get to their step back or trying to get downhill, that was really important for me. So, I think just the cushion and the feel, and I think when people put these on, they’ll be able to tell as well,” Clark said.
Clark wants fans to know that she has poured a lot of time and energy into each colorway of her Caitlin 1 signature shoes.
“I’ve probably given them a headache, but that’s OK. I hope people know, like, I truly cared so much about this shoe, and it’s not like Nike just created this; I created it with them, and I think that’s really special and really important, and I hope people feel that. I think even with these first two colors that are launching, with the blue and the yellow, they’re inverses of each other, and I feel like people didn’t notice that right away, but it was something they discovered maybe a couple weeks later when the yellow was launched and talked about a little bit more.
“And we’ll maybe be doing that with a few more colors. So, I guess you gotta stay on the lookout, and you can put it into the photo booth app (with) every single color, and maybe the inverse of that color will come out. I don’t know, we’ll see,” Clark said.
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This article originally appeared on Hawkeyes Wire: Caitlin Clark featured as SLAM KICKS 29 cover athlete
Reporting by Scout Springgate, Hawkeyes Wire / Hawkeyes Wire
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By Scout Springgate, Hawkeyes Wire | USA TODAY Network
