NikeSKIMS Put Its Waffle Racer Inside a Waffle Iron, and the Reference Is Older Than the Shoe

NikeSKIMS has spent most of its short life selling the things you wear once you are already at the gym. The Waffle Racer is the first shoe it has put out that is about getting there. It arrives November 10 at nike.com and SKIMS.com in three two-tone colorways, and it is the first time the brand has reached into Nike’s own archive for a silhouette with a running history rather than a studio one. The campaign makes the reach literal. One of the frames is a pair of shoes sitting in a waffle iron.

The waffle is the oldest idea Nike has. Bill Bowerman, the Oregon track coach who co-founded the company, wanted traction out of a flat surface without resorting to metal spikes, and the answer turned out to be sitting on a kitchen counter. He poured urethane into a household waffle iron and pulled out a sheet of studded rubber. That grid went under Nike’s running shoes through the 1970s, and it is still one of the few outsoles a casual observer can identify on sight without knowing the model name attached to it. It is worth saying plainly that the waffle was a performance answer to a performance problem, not a styling exercise. The nubs gave grip on grass and track without the weight or the restriction of spikes, and they wore down slower than the gum soles the competition was using.

The Waffle Racer is the lighter end of that family, a nylon and suede running shoe from the years when Nike’s entire reputation rested on what it could do for distance runners. Nike dates the original to the 1970s and leaves it there, which is more careful than most of the retellings. The enthusiast press has settled on 1977, though the sourcing behind that year is thinner than its repetition suggests. What is not in question is the shape: low, narrow through the waist, a wedge of foam under the heel and the grid underneath.

NikeSKIMS has not redrawn any of that. The upper is nylon with suede and leather overlays, the midsole is foam, and the outsole is the rubber waffle, which Nike’s own spec sheet still sells on multi-surface traction rather than on nostalgia. What the brand changed is the color logic and the small print. The three makeups run quiet and two-tone: an espresso brown on brown, a navy with a sail swoosh over a gum sole, and a cream with red that reads closest to a period pair. The heel tabs are split, NIKE on one shoe and SKIMS on the other, so a pair sitting on the floor reads as a sentence instead of a co-brand lockup. The tongue, heel and sockliner carry the rest of the detailing.

So consider what the waffle iron is actually doing in that photograph. NikeSKIMS is not yet two years old, it sells a system of dress rather than a sport, and its footwear to this point has been chosen for how it fits a wardrobe, the NikeSKIMS Rift among it. Putting the Waffle Racer at the center of a season, then shooting it inside the appliance that produced Nike’s sole, is a borrowed-legitimacy move and a reasonably sophisticated one. The brand is not claiming the running history. It is claiming the right to stand next to it, which is a different and much easier argument to win. Nike has leased the archive out before, usually to designers and usually with the silhouette altered enough to signal whose hands it passed through. This one is notable for how little has been touched. The restraint is the statement.

Whether it lands depends on something the collection cannot control. Retro running is crowded, and the pairs that have moved this year are the ones with a visible sole story behind them, which is why the Moon Shoe keeps coming back in makeups nobody asked for. The waffle qualifies on that test comfortably. The harder question is whether a buyer who wants a 1970s Nike runner takes the one with SKIMS on the heel over the several Nike already sells without it. The split heel tab is a real bet on that, because it puts the co-brand where the wearer cannot style around it.

Retail is $130, which against Nike’s own current board is deliberately unremarkable. The SP-tier retros running this month, the Air Max 90 SP and the Air Bakin High SP, are both $170. The Mind 002 Flyknit sits at $145 and the V5 RNR lands at $95. A nylon and suede retro runner with licensed branding and a foam midsole, priced at $130, is priced like a wardrobe shoe rather than a collector’s one, and that is consistent with everything else about the launch. There is no resale record to read here, because this silhouette has not carried this branding before.

The NikeSKIMS Waffle Racer releases November 10 at nike.com/NikeSKIMS and SKIMS.com, with select Nike, SKIMS and partner retail locations to follow. The full Retro Sport collection, the apparel the shoe was photographed with, arrives November 17. Style code IW3882, in colorways IW3882-002, IW3882-200 and IW3882-400. Retail is $130.

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The Sneakers Team

The Sneakers Team is the editorial desk behind becausesneakers, founded and edited by Nick Engvall. Nick has spent more than two decades in the sneaker industry. He built the original Eastbay Blog, led the first dedicated sneaker team at Complex, ran the first UGC and seeding programs at Finish Line, was employee number nine at StockX, and served as Senior Director at Stadium Goods. He hosts the Sneaker History podcast, and his first book, Small Luxuries: Sneakers, arrives in October 2026 from Motorbooks. Release details on this site are checked against the brand's own product information before publication, and anything we cannot confirm is labelled rather than stated.

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