Hikari Shibata x adidas Gazelle Indoor 'Night Indigo'
Colorway: Night Indigo/Night Grey/Dark Blue · Style code: IH9986 · Release date: June 11, 2024 · Price: $214 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Hikari Shibata x adidas Campus 00s 'Dark Purple' (IG1721) · Hikari Shibata x adidas Campus 00s 'Brown Black' (IG1722) · Hikari Shibata x adidas Rivalry Low 86 'Off White' (IE7337) · Hikari Shibata x adidas Gazelle Indoor 'White Night Grey Gum' (IH9985)
Nylon is the unusual part. The Gazelle Indoor is a suede shoe by default, and swapping in a technical woven fabric changes almost everything about how it behaves: it sheds water instead of absorbing it, it does not develop a nap, and it reflects light in a sheen rather than a matte field. The palette Hikari Shibata chose keeps the focus there. Night Indigo covers the upper, Night Grey handles the middle values, and Dark Blue fills in the rest, a three-tone scheme in which no colour is more than a shade away from its neighbour.
The result is a shoe that reads as one continuous dark surface until the fabric catches the light and the panel divisions appear. That is a very different proposition from a suede pair, where the contrast trim does the structural work. It released on June 11, 2024. Technical fabric also ages differently: nylon will not scuff pale at the toe the way suede does, but it will eventually shine at the flex points, which is the tradeoff for a material that resists everything else.