The growing need and wants for having it all, style, comfort, and performance lays this trifecta as the foundation for Nike Sportswear creating its first Tech Pack in 2007. Technical fabrics have been around for a while but here incorporating technology with great design really takes off, and soon comfort is to follow. Meant designs and performance were pushed to new creative heights at Nike, and lifestyle apparel received a previously unseen focus, as the markets grew.Įnter the 2000’s and 2010’s where the term techwear really comes into its own. In the wild aesthetic decade of the 90’s that laid ahead, several developments like for example the budding stages of digital aided technology, and working with figures like Michael Jordan and director Spike Lee, who directed many of the Nike ads at time, and two figures who aren’t used to accepting limits or no’s as an answer. Everyone from b-boys to ravers, to the athletes it was originally designed for, wore it and it opened Nike's eyes for the wants and needs of having apparel that looked fashionable but acted like performance sportswear. With its vivid colorways, it fused fashion and function and was soon adopted by a number of subcultures, who liked the look and performance it offered. The Windrunner, on the other hand, was made out of single layer lightweight nylon, that along with its cut, aided comfort and mobility while offering some protection against wind and rain. Heavy cotton was the standard fabric in use for athletic wear at the time, which wasn’t comfortable when training and sweating in both sunny and rainy conditions. Firstly Nike’s Windrunner jacket was revolutionary for a number of reasons, its development had been spurred on by the success of the Cortez and Waffle Racer shoes, it was a piece of apparel that had been developed in symbiosis with athletes. In the mid 70’s and early 80’s, Nike released some key pieces of clothing that would sow the seeds for the techwear development that lay in its future.