There’s an enduring, endearing Eighties-y naffness about Reebok that the brand has never quite managed to shake. Although established in England in 1958, and actually with a lineage tracing back to 1895, there’s always a dodgy hangover of American suburban housewives of that decade, the era when Reebok went truly stratospheric. They still look Eighties a few hundred years later, when Sigourney Weaver wears a version apparently designed for 2179 in Alien. Yet out-of-time, slightly out-of-style offness is exactly what connects it to Michael Rider’s designs for Celine, and why he chose Reebok for that house’s first-ever co-branded trainer collection. A Rider ride is, generally, about mixing up things which don’t belong, what we call ‘tension’ in fashion parlance. Exemplary of that, he quietly bottomed out incongruous outfits in his first stand-alone Celine menswear show in June with the 1982-originating Reebok Freestyle Lo. Tongues dual logo-ed with Celine’s nomenclature and Reebok’s Delta graphic, their puffy proportions executed in soft leather, they came out in a variety of colours, some already scuffed up, appearing at first glance as if the models had wandered out just wearing their own. And that idea of real life is something Rider is constantly attracted to – although he does reality a bit better than the rest of us.
The Freestyle Lo by Celine/Reebok is available to buy now.
