Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner wore a 1-of-1 pair of Nike footwear throughout his Japan go to—with customized hand embroidery made by a crew of 15 ladies | Fortune

Throughout his go to to Japan this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner was noticed sporting a singular pair of customized Nike Vomero Plus sneakers created solely for him by Sashiko Gals, a collective of 15 ladies artisans from Otsuchi City in Iwate Prefecture. Cook dinner wore the customized footwear in the course of the grand reopening of Apple Ginza in Tokyo, which was the corporate’s first retail retailer outdoors america when it initially opened in 2003.

The Sashiko Gals collective specializes within the conventional Japanese needlework strategy of sashiko, which makes use of daring operating stitches for reparative and ornamental functions. The group, consisting of girls aged 40 to 80, fashioned in response to the Nice East Japan Earthquake in 2011 as a part of native reconstruction efforts. Every customized piece requires roughly 30 hours of meticulous handwork by skilled artisans.

Cook dinner’s sneakers featured the present Nike Vomero Plus colorway with an all-new higher that includes intricate blue patchwork, full with white stitching and refined hits of crimson to match the sneaker’s ZoomX cushioning, embroidered utilizing conventional Japanese sashiko methods.

Cook dinner’s cultural immersion throughout his Japan go to prolonged past the customized sneakers. In an X submit Wednesday, the Apple CEO mentioned he “met Pikachu, connected with developers using our software features in amazing ways, and played Dragon Ball Gekishin Squadra at Bandai Namco… Japan is a gamer’s paradise!” The submit accompanied a video exhibiting Cook dinner interacting with the enduring Pokémon character and touring numerous gaming amenities.

The CEO’s go to culminated with Friday’s grand reopening of its redesigned four-story Apple Ginza retailer, which options sustainability parts like adaptive louvers for pure gentle regulation and regionally sourced supplies. Cook dinner made a shock entrance on the opening ceremony, greeting enthusiastic Apple followers with excessive fives after a countdown.

Cook dinner’s customized Sashiko Gals-Nike collab represents the rising international recognition of the collective’s work, which has garnered consideration on social media for remodeling atypical sneakers into distinctive artwork items. Their bespoke customization service, which begins at round $1,600, is so in style potential purchasers have to use by a lottery system.

For this story, Fortune used generative AI to assist with an preliminary draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the data earlier than publishing.

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