Source: Mike Coppola / Getty
After weeks of back-and-forth between Nike and Brooklyn art studio MSCHF over Lil Nas X’s “Satan Shoes,“ it appears that both sides have finally arrived at a truce in the latest sneaker “holy war,” and on his birthday no less.
MSCHF posed the question, “Heresy only exists in relation to doctrine: who is Nike to censor one [set of shoes] but not the other?” a week ago, and the Swoosh has now agreed to let the whole matter go as long as MSCHF agreed to buy back pairs of both already sold “Satan Shoes” and 2019’s less-notorious-but-still-provocative “Jesus Shoes,“too.
“As part of the settlement, Nike has asked MSCHF, and MSCHF has agreed, to initiate a voluntary recall to buy back any Satan Shoes and Jesus Shoes for their original retail prices, in order to remove them from circulation,” Nike’s April 8 press release reads. “If any purchasers were confused, or if they otherwise want to return their shoes, they may do so for a full refund. Purchasers who choose not to return their shoes and later encounter a product issue, defect, or health concern should contact MSCHF, not Nike. The parties are pleased to put this dispute behind them.”
Strangely, MSCHF’s social media has been wiped clean on both IG and Twitter, and the company released its own statement saying the sneakers were really “intended to comment on the absurdity of the collaboration culture practiced by some brands, and about the perniciousness of intolerance.”
Their attorney, David Bernstein, of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, told the Wall Street Journal, “MSCHF, from the start, distributed these shoes to make a statement and thanks to the lawsuit and all of the publicity that came from it that statement reached far more corners than we expected.”
Bernstein did also say, however, “These shoes were never about making money,” but were better yet “a collaboration with Satan.”
Talk about making a deal with the devil. Sada Baby must be heated right now.
Nike and MSCHF Come to Truce in “Holy War” Over Lil Nas X’s 666 Pairs of Satan Shoes was originally published on cassiuslife.com
