Nike and Melitta Baumeister Unveil a Collaboration Built Around the Rift Rocker Sneaker
Nike, the US sportswear company, has a new collaboration with designer Melitta Baumeister. It includes a sneaker called the Rift Rocker and a full range of clothing.
Baumeister won the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund in 2023. The award is run by the Council of Fashion Designers of America, a US industry group, and Vogue magazine.
The partnership began with running shoes. Nike first approached Baumeister before her spring 2025 show, offering her a colourway of two running shoes, the Vomero Premium and the Pegasus Premium. She went on to reimagine both shoes that year.
The clothing side of the collection includes a puffer coat, a track jacket, track trousers and tabi socks. Tabi socks have a separate compartment for the big toe, a shape with roots in traditional Japanese footwear.
The Rift Rocker is the collection's headline shoe. According to WWD, it has a split-toe shape, where the front of the shoe is divided in two as with a tabi sock. Its upper is distressed leather, meaning it is deliberately worn to look aged. The sole is thick and curved, a "rocker" shape, and the designer took its inspiration from sculpted clay.
Hypebeast reported in September that the Rift Rocker had debuted at Seoul Art Week, an arts event held in the South Korean capital.
For anyone who follows sneakers, the project shows how a sports brand can bring in an designer from the fashion calendar. For everyone else, it is a reminder that a shoe on a shop shelf usually began as a design brief, a sketch and a sample made in a factory.
