Design is often based on other design, how many Ferrari shaped bedsheets or My Little Pony shaped birthday cakes have we not seen in our life?
So when Nike remastered the Janoski for its 10-year anniversary they also looked outside, they probably looked at animals, the sky, cement patterns, but in the end, I believe they simply looked out of their Beaverton office window onto the parking lot and there they found the answer sitting in the swooshes own parking lot.
(disclaimer: this might not be factual, they might have just found pictures of the car on the internet)
Photos by Danny Sommerfeld.
Text by Roland Hoogwater.
The story continues below…
The Volkswagen Polo “Harlekin’s” story connects to the Janoski in multiple ways. It was in 1994 that the German company wanted to draw attention to their newly-updated Polo model but the problem they had to solve was:
“How do we get people to look at the newness?”.
The answer came in all colors! They devised a special showroom model of the new 6N, this model would breathe NEW! But this model was only meant to show off in the showroom it wasn’t available to the public… Well a couple of the showroom models actually did get sold afterwards and those cars began to create “word of mouth” on the streets and when the streets are talking the people at VW were listening.
1995 swings around and featured in the catalog is the now legendary VW 6N Harlekin as demanded by the public and in 2019 a similar story can be told about Nike SB’s Janoski shoe. Like the Polo, it looks similar but it is not quite the same, from little leather linings to the tape on the sole, everything has been tweaked for ’19 and that is where the two stories meet.
The story concludes below…
Fast forward to the 10th of May, Denny Pham, Jan Henrik Kongstein, Peter Buikema, Leo Preisinger and myself find ourselves driving around Berlin in a VW Harlekin wearing the Janoski Harlekin, we are putting both through the wringer for the next 2,5 days.
We didn’t do that alone, of course, we invited some Nike riders and Berlin locals to test it with us along the way.
To be honest the car has had a bit more mileage than the shoe but both held up quite well during our time even though Leo had his doubts about the car.
After the 2.5 days we concluded a couple of things:
- Denny Pham skates like he is playing THPS.
- The “new” Janoski looks better than the “old” Janoski (look closely).
- Jan Kliewer can shove his board like it is 1991.
- Jan Henrik like all people in Norway is hella tech.
- Michael Mackrodt drives a car the same way he skates.
Thank you for the support Skatedeluxe and Nike SB <3