PIERRE HARDY X VICTOR CRUZ

For his first-ever partnership, French accessories designer;Pierre Hardy;has teamed up with pro-athlete;Victor Cruz;on a;limited-edition men’s sneaker called the V.C.I., defined by a thick, all-terrain sole, unique lacing and scrunched wrap around the back.;; Cruz, the;former NFL star;and New York Giants ace, regularly visited Hardy’s showroom in Paris so working together was a natural move. The starting point was Cruz’s style evolution, from his childhood in Northern Jersey until the present. Hardy dipped into Cruz’s closet archive and together they pinned down;three key years;in the sportsman’s high-profile career – 1996, the year he fell in love with football; 2006, the year he played his first varsity season with the University of Massachusetts Minutem; 2012, when Cruz was part of the starting line-up for the New York Giants in the Super Bowl win against the New England Patriots. Each one is represented by a different colorway spanning multicolor camouflage, black and gray and the Giants’ blue, white and red palette.; “We started from taking a pre-existing construction of a shoe in my collection, and then we emphasized it by making it stronger in appearance. We tried to push the aesthetic to the maximum, to make the sneakers as expressive as possible,” says Hardy, a pioneer in luxury sneakers.; Adds Cruz: “With Pierre, we captured an array of styles from when I was younger, through my college years, up until this decade. The shoes are symbolic, and together, they tell a story.”