NikeSKIMS Puts Its Spin on the Waffle Racer
The NikeSKIMS experiment just went deep into the vault. On November 10, Kim Kardashian’s line with Nike released its take on the Waffle Racer — the 1977 silhouette built on Bill Bowerman’s waffle-iron outsole, the design that literally founded Nike’s running empire.
Three colorways carry the release: Baroque Brown, Thunder Blue and Light Bone/Varsity Red, priced at $130 in women’s sizing, sold through Nike and SKIMS.
A Retro Sport apparel collection follows on November 17, extending the same vintage-athletics language into the clothing side of the line — the SKIMS playbook of sequencing drops to keep a collection in the conversation for weeks, not days.
Cynics will call celebrity sneaker lines a shortcut, but the Waffle Racer choice is smarter than that. This is not a hyped silhouette borrowed for a season; it is Nike’s founding artifact, and dressing it in SKIMS’ neutral, body-first palette puts it in front of an audience that buys differently — and buys out sizes.
For Culture’s cop-or-drop ledger: a $130 heritage runner in three wearable colorways, from a line whose drops consistently sell through, is a cop for the SKIMS faithful and an easy skip for purists who want their ’77 Racers untouched.
The NikeSKIMS Waffle Racer is out now via Nike and SKIMS; the Retro Sport apparel lands November 17.