The General Purpose Shoe is the grandchild of the first shoe Tom Sachs ever released with Nike. The Mars Yard was designed for use on Pasadena’s Martian surface simulator and garnered instant cult acclaim. Although Sachs designed it for athletic use, and hoped people would wear them to death, the Mars Yard immediately hit the shrink-wrapped archives of sneakerheads. A second iteration, the Mars Yard 2.0, corrected some of the material shortcomings of the first edition, but still came at a high retail price. The Mars Yard project used expensive premium materials and techniques, which Sachs laments drove the price past a lot of people’s budgets and might not have been worth it in the end. The second release also drove up the hype around the Mars Yard project even more. If you still want a pair, you should expect to spend four or five figures.
The General Purpose Shoe is dodging the hype, intentionally. Nike ran ads declaring the shoe “boring,” ironically saying that “your sneakers shouldn’t be the most exciting thing about you” and that they are simply tools for living. So, the GPS is your Swiss Army Knife (or Leatherman, as Sachs prefers). Although it might not be the best for elite athletics, or other specialised tasks, it was designed to support a long day at work and a night out, that is, for general purposes. It is also affordable; at $110 to $109.99 – which lands a penny below the New York City sales tax cut off – Tom Sachs wanted this to be within reach of more than just the wealthy.
Still, the shoe’s first release sold out almost immediately, even in its uniquely broad size range. The GPS is Nike’s first ever shoe to have a full size run. Beginning at a women's size 5 and going all the way up to women's size 16.5 (men's 3.5 to men's 15), the shoe is designed to fit just about everyone. Sachs even flipped the men's and women’s sizing on the box’s size sticker, a small but meaningful gesture of inclusivity in a traditionally gendered industry. The first drop of the exclusive Studio colourway is long gone, but a set of new releases is impending. If you can’t bear the wait, they are already on reselling sites for a couple hundred dollars. But, Sachs emphasises, this shoe is here to stay, and will get on many more feet before long. The General Purpose Shoe is all set for its September 2nd release.