Cassius (Cass) Hirst has been spray painting Nike Air Force 1 sneakers since he was 14, first as a gift for his father (that would be Damien Hirst) and then, before long, for clients including A$AP Rocky, Offset, Rihanna, and the late Virgil Abloh, who in 2019 invited the younger Hirst to host a workshop at Nikelab’s Chicago Re-creation Center and sell his shoes at the Church and State pop-up shop at the Museum Of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
Cassius has a new canvas: the leather Prada America’s Cup sneaker, originally designed in the late ’90s for the Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli sailing crew.
In collaboration with the Italian fashion house, he just released a Cass x Prada capsule collection, reimagining the classic through four looks.
Courtesy of Prada.
“I was painting shoes, taking photos, and turning those photos into complex vinyl stencils that became abstract designs,” the sneakerhead said in a statement. “I would mask off part of the body of the shoe, and then wrap the whole shoe in the stencil. It looked crazy.
“I sent a photo to my dad, and then he sent a photo of that to Miuccia [Prada]. And she said, ‘This looks amazing, let’s do something.’”
Inspired by the 18-year-old Londoner’s love of electronic music, each style reflects a unique stage in the evolution, or “envelope,” of a sound.
There’s the ATT4CK, with its molded resin spikes; the marbled, distressed-leather D3CAY; the brightly colored SUST4IN, which has white detailing on the sides; and the subtler REL3ASE, whose neon ombre seems to glow. (The names reference ADSR, a type of envelope generator with four parameters: attack, decay, sustain, release.)
Courtesy of Prada.
Each pair comes in a co-branded Prada box overlaid with a scan of Cassius’s brain. His logo, he said, “represents hope and knowledge in a world of shadows and uncertainty.”
The capsule’s surreal campaign combines still and motion imagery by the Paris-based photographer and filmmaker artist Axel Morin, featuring performers clad in Cass x Prada sneakers and matching masks. The soundtrack is by Cassius.
Limited to an edition of 3,000, the Cass x Prada collection is available to buy here and at select Prada boutiques.