When Nike’s Radical AirFlow top first appeared at Western States last year, it didn’t arrive with a lengthy explainer or a tidy innovation framework. It simply showed up in its perforated, slightly surreal, and impossible-to-ignorant way, worn by Caleb Olson en route to victory.
At a time when most performance apparel evolves in careful, incremental steps, this felt like something else entirely. It wasn’t anupdate or a refinement. Instead, Radical Airflow appears to be a disruption so big that it might reshape how we look at performance garment design in the future.
