PR | AVIA re-launch and SS23 onward

Brief:

If you were around for the mid-’80s golden era of basketball, then you’ll already be aware of the impact that AVIA had on-court, ultimately contributing to the culture as a whole. It was around this time that sportspeople started making their claim on trendsetting, a title previously obtained solely by off-court icons.

As a new client for 2023, Hartcopy was approached by AVIA - one of the brands that epitomised our mid-’80s golden era of basketball, reworked in preparation for its reintroduction into the modern footwear market.

Despite re-launching during an age that lends heavily to mass-production and maximizing profit, AVIA remains true to its roots, reworking and updating designs unique to their brand-image by remaining original at heart - epitomizing an essence that enveloped an entire generation, the rise of sneaker culture. Excitement is back. With help from an in-house archival research database, or archaeological findings if you will, models bearing unique weight and value within our modern market are set to land once more. Ultimately, earmarking the 880 as a basepoint and building out.

With help from well-preserved samples and @Velour’s eye for refinement, each silhouette bears a dimensionally-accurate outsole to its original form, to the extent that every detailed texture, line width, length and even arc-angle are produced without a single millimeter for error.

Considering the age and scarcity of well-preserved, untouched examples of AVIA’s prolific back-catalog, articles had to be pulled from multiple collections throughout the years, summoning a multitude of varying details that required refinement. For example, before honing in on details, it was imperative to neutralize abrasion-induced wear or oxidized sole yellowing, paying close attention to points of recurring deformation before finalizing precise lasting and panel shape data for production - accurate to those recovered from patent documents.
In developing a dimensionally-accurate outsole, each detailed texture, line width, length and even the arc-angle were designed without a single millimeter for error. Relaunching AVIA beneath AVIA International was about utilising methods both new and old when replicating one of sporting history’s most recognisable footwear brands, introducing improvements to structural integrity where necessary both visible and  invisible to the naked eye, improving structural integrity alongside wearability and churning through sample, after sample, after sample.