Has Nike Become the Most Important Fashion Brand in the World?

Nike's partnerships with designers have made the company a significant player in the world of high-end fashion.

Nike
The Nike logo. (Arthur Widak/NurPhoto)
NurPhoto via Getty Images

Nike just did it: The company is not just the most famous sneaker brand in the world, but gaining momentum to become the biggest fashion brand on the planet.

Over the course of the last decade, the company has sought out the most celebrated high-end designers in the world, and their collaborations have added tremendously to the prestige of the already-massively influential institution.

Nike has appeared on countless runways across the 2018 fashion weeks, as it has become an indispensable part of designer couture. Nike’s partnerships with designers like Off-White’s Virgil Abloh and Burberry’s Riccardo Tisci have fused the worlds of athletic dress and more traditional fashion houses like never before.

Though Christian Dior currently leads the way as the richest fashion brand in the world, bringing in $49 billion in sales last year, Nike is projected to surpass the $50 billion mark by 2022. As Abloh pointed out to GQ, Nike did not have an immediate business need to get into high-end fashion. “It doesn’t need to do anything niche,” Abloh said. “That to me is what’s more interesting: that a company as big as Nike even picks up the phone when a kid like me calls,” Abloh continued.

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