Asics (アシックス)

Kihachiro Onitsuka made his first basketball shoes in Kobe in 1949, in a country where youth sport was seen as a cure for post-war delinquency. The current name, adopted in 1977, is the acronym of anima sana in corpore sano.

The brand leads two parallel lives. One is technical, in marathon and road running, where the Gel-Kayano has been a reference since 1993. The other is cultural: the Mexico 66, worn by Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, turned the Onitsuka Tiger line into an urban fashion object entirely detached from athletic performance.