Under Armour are better known for creating high performance fitness apparel but now they’re striking out to make waves in the increasingly popular world of running. Everybody and their mother has joined the running craze, so it’s great timing for a company with strong fitness heritage to join the mix in a serious way.
But with their statement design and bold colour palettes, have Under Amour churned out a gimmick or does the SpeedForm actually deliver?
The new Under Armour Speedform RC is a shoe like no other, from its’ very inception, right through to it’s construction.Why? Because when design duo Kevin Fallon and Dave Dombrow decided that Under Armour was going to get into the running shoe game, they didn’t want to simply follow in the steps of their competition.
Having both worked together at Puma and Nike, the pair knew that developing their new shoe in the same workshops and using the same processes as their already well established competition simply wasn’t an option. Speaking about their decision to look elsewhere for the construction of the SpeedForm, Kevin Fallon told me: “We had to give people a compelling reason to try Under Armour, so we couldn’t create just another running shoe.”
Instead, Kevin and Dave decided to develop their shoe with a bra manufacturer, inspired by the book Fashioning Apollo, where it was revealed that rather than working with military contractors, NASA turned to an under garment maker to create the suit that took mankind into space – one of the most advanced apparel construction challenges ever undertaken.
We had to give people a compelling reason to try Under Armour, so we couldn’t create just another running shoe.”
Dave Dombrow was keen to build a shoe that was in keeping with the compression and snug fit that Under Armour’s fitness apparel is known for, to create the best fitting running shoe the market has ever seen, and that wasn’t going to happen using the same old machines and processes. The result? Dave feels that by choosing to develop their new shoe in an entirely new way, Under Armour have created a new lane for themselves in the footwear arena.
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The result of their gamble sees the SpeedForm’s heel made from a single piece of moulded fabric (see above), a true first in running shoes, and it’s joined to the rest of the upper by a sonically welded seam that runs a long the side of the shoe.
My video review below shows the Under Armour SpeedForm up close and I talk about my experience running with it, if you have any questions at all please comment here or on YouTube and I will try to respond as quickly as I can.
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