The collection is the result of an otherwise unlikely collaboration between high fashion and the Swoosh icon. It’s the product of a multi-year conversation(s) between Junya Watanabe, the fashion designer and apprentice behind Comme des Garcons, and Richard Clarke, Nike’s Creative Director of Sport Culture, who joined forces to develop a collection of “the best of” (pre-Air Jordan) shoes.

The shoes represent the best of technology at their given times, designed for optimum sports performance. These breakthrough technologies have long been discarded, but the series’ collection of three different model types from over the years comment on how Nike impacted sports and mainstream culture in the retro-favorite 70’s and 80’s.

The concept was to create a “new” line that looked as if the designs emerged straight from the original creators’ tech specs, with a bit of wear along the way. Bill Bowerman, the head track coach at the University of Oregon, was the man responsible for the original Nike craze of waffle soles not too many years after Nike’s founder Phil Knight, a University of Oregon student, began selling running shoes out of the trunk of his car. The first waffle soles were the result of Bowerman’s quest for durable, lighter shoes for his runners including the famed Steve Prefontaine. Millions of sales later, it’s hard to believe it all began with rubber poured into Bowerman’s wife’s waffle iron as an experiment.

Call it art in fashion as a cultural statement: The new versions of the vintage products are made to original specifications and aged to look like thirty years actually have progressed, complete with rather evident imperfections, such as faded suede and even yellowed midsoles. In addition to the Oregon Waffle, the Nike Daybreak and Cortez are also available.

The collections were first sold at Comme des Garcons stores in New York late this spring and have made their way to premium retailers such as fashion concept store Collette in Paris and other selective fashion boutiques in Manhattan, Europe, and Asia, selling for about 100 Euros per pair.

Nike isn’t the only one to get sentimental for the elite footwear wearing market. Reebok made its own trip down memory lane when it re-released the 1980’s white leather aerobics shoes that became synonymous with the brand, including a special edition done by New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Levi’s also has its own 20^th century heritage reflected in its own vintage clothing line, as does Fila.

In addition to inspiring the vintage collection, Watanabe has put his mark on three new products from Nike including the Nike Woven Air Footscape, featuring a very un-Nike like design in the colors of the eight national teams that Nike sponsored in the 2006 FIFA World Cup. The shoes are available only through Comme des Garcons in London and Tokyo.

Other reproductions of Nike running shoes, such as Nike Elite, are also available from select retailers, but come sans vintage wear.

Alycia de Mesa is a brand consultant, speaker and writer with more than a decade of industry experience ranging from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies. Her latest book is Brand Avatar – Translating Virtual World Branding Into Real World Success (Palgrave-Macmillan).