Dunk High 'Coraline' | US 7.5

LAIKA sits geographically and personally close to Nike. The studio operates out of the Portland area near Nike's Beaverton headquarters, and its president and CEO Travis Knight — son of Nike co-founder Phil Knight — has built the animation house through a decades-long connection that made cross-brand collaborations between the two studios feel like a natural family gesture rather than a marketing arrangement. When LAIKA released Coraline in February 2009 as its debut feature — the Henry Selick-directed stop-motion adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novella that grossed over $124 million worldwide and reset the international perception of what stop-motion could achieve — Nike produced a small run of promotional footwear to mark the moment. This Dunk High Premium comes directly from that release.

The shoe translates Coraline's hand-woven, hand-knit, hand-sewn visual world into footwear directly. The upper is constructed in herringbone-woven wool tweed with contrasting tan leather overlays across the mudguard, toe box, Swoosh, eyestay, and heel — a material vocabulary that mirrors the textile craft Selick's stop-motion team built across the film's character costumes and sets, most memorably in the knit sweaters, patched dresses, and layered fabric details that anchor Coraline's other-world wardrobe. Visible top-stitching runs throughout the pair, a soft light blue interior lining pulls from the film's dream-world palette, and the chocolate brown gum-toned outsole closes out the tonal story. Two additional lace sets — navy blue and cobalt — accompany the shoe as part of the original sample kit, echoing the film's cool-blue accents. The pair was distributed exclusively through Nike's Sportswear PR channel one-to-one to editorial and industry contacts, with the original outer packaging remaining intact today. LAIKA × Nike promotional footwear from the Coraline release exists in genuinely tight numbers, and pieces surviving with their original packaging and full lace kit intact rarely surface outside private collections.