NIKEiD: Is It Worthwhile??

I’ve never grabbed a pair of sneakers off of NIKEiD.

Sure, I’ve messed around with wild color combinations, and tried my hand at making a dope monochromatic shoe just like most sneakerheads have at some point, but I’ve never actually copped anything off of the site.

I’ve seen both very clean designs, like Yoosh‘s Air Max 1’s (click here if you’d like to see them for yourself), and Moh‘s animal-print pattern Air Max 90’s, and I’ve also seen horrible, poorly color-blocked monstrosities (there were a few truly awful iD’s on a few basketball teams I played on back in the day), and boring and bland Roshe Runs.

So that leads me to question, as someone who’s never actually bought anything off of NIKEiD: Is it worthwhile? The answer is both yes and no.

There’s a few situations where it makes a lot of sense to do a NIKEiD: If you’re in the market for a clean color scheme of a certain shoe that’s not available, if you want to make something wild, crazy and flashy (which can still be clean if done correctly, of course), or if there’s a limited time option (like cork or multi-color Flyknit). Any of those instances are a perfectly good excuse to pay the extra money for a custom pair of kicks.

There’s also a few situations where it doesn’t make sense at all: When you didn’t get a colorway of a shoe you really wanted and you remake it on iD (seems like a cheap cop-out…why would you want to have something that’s not the real thing?), or when you change a few minor details and replicate a color that’s already on shelves. I can’t say that I’d find either of those a worthwhile investment of time or money.

But then again, I’ve never actually pulled the trigger on anything. Maybe I should just go ahead and do it…the Huaraches have been calling my name recently.

Have you copped anything from NIKEiD? Did you find what you bought to be a good purchase? Be sure to let us know in the comments or on Twitter!

–RDwyer