There is a particular kind of confidence in a designer who refuses to choose. Studio Nicholson, the London label founded by Nick Wakeman, has spent more than a decade perfecting a wardrobe built on restraint—generous silhouettes, considered fabrics, a palette that never shouts. So when the brand made its Paris Fashion Week debut with its Spring 2027 collection, the runway wasn't the only story worth watching. On the feet of that collection was the Studio Nicholson x ASICS GEL-KINETIC SP zip-up, a footwear collaboration that does something rarer than it looks: it takes a performance running shoe and teaches it to sit at a dinner table.
The GEL-KINETIC SP is already an unusual animal within the ASICS archive—a modern silhouette that borrows from the early-2000s GEL-Kinetic lineage but trims it of its bulk, trading maximalist cushioning for something leaner and more architectural. Studio Nicholson's intervention is surgical. The most immediate gesture is the full-length zip shroud that runs over the laces, closing the upper into a single, uninterrupted surface. It's a move pulled directly from dress-shoe vocabulary—the clean vamp of a derby, the smooth line of a side-zip boot—applied here to a mesh-and-synthetic running chassis. The effect is quietly radical. The shoe reads formal at a glance and technical on inspection, which is exactly the tension Wakeman has built her label around.
The Zip Is the Statement
Materials follow the same logic. The upper is rendered in tonal, muted finishes—think stone, charcoal, deep navy—rather than the aggressive color-blocking typical of performance footwear. Subtle Studio Nicholson branding sits alongside ASICS' own, and the GEL cushioning underfoot is retained without apology, because the point was never to pretend this is a leather oxford. The point was to make a shoe that could plausibly move from a morning commute to an evening appointment without the wearer feeling like they've changed costumes mid-day. The silhouette's segmented sole and sculpted midfoot keep the running DNA legible; the zip keeps the whole thing composed.
A Calling Card, Not a Side Project
Culturally, the timing is precise. Studio Nicholson's arrival at Paris Fashion Week with its SS27 collection marked a genuine threshold moment for the brand—a London label with a devoted following stepping onto fashion's most scrutinized stage. Simultaneously, the house has been expanding its physical footprint with intent: a first store in China, a new outpost in Kyoto, and a stated ambition toward global growth. A footwear collaboration with ASICS, then, is not a side project. It's a calling card. ASICS, for its part, has spent recent years proving itself the most design-literate of the major sportswear houses, and lending its archive to a label like Studio Nicholson signals a shared belief that the future of sneakers lies in hybridity rather than hype.
Who It's For
Who is this shoe for? It suits the person who has outgrown logo-forward footwear but refuses to surrender comfort—the architect, the editor, the creative director who wears tailoring loosely and walks a great deal. It rewards someone who understands that the zip is the statement, not the sole. And it matters now because the boundaries between formal and athletic, between dress and utility, have never been more porous. Where a decade ago the "dress sneaker" was a marketing compromise, today it can be a genuine design proposition—provided the maker has the discipline to edit rather than decorate.
That discipline is Studio Nicholson's signature, and it's why this collaboration reads as more than a seasonal tie-in. It's a thesis in miniature: formality and ease, running and restraint, resolved into a single object. On the Paris runway, it was a footnote. On the street, it's the whole argument.
