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YAMAHA × HIFI LVRS — Onitsuka Tiger

YAMAHA × HIFI LVRS

On an Onitsuka Tiger · 1 of 1 · in production · edition n°1, Yamaha, 70 years of high fidelity

The first edition carries one word on its cover: 継承, keishō, transmission. The pair that goes with it is being built. Here is where it stands — the drawings, the decisions, what is still open.

In production

One of one
In production
Base
Onitsuka Tiger
Country
Japan
See the brand
YAMAHA
Maker
ARTHUR BERQUET
Edition
EDITION N°1 — YAMAHA

Why an Onitsuka

Yamaha is Japanese. The shoe had to be too.

Onitsuka Tiger comes from Kobe, it predates the technology race, and it never entirely stopped looking like what it was. That is the same relationship to time I saw in the Yamaha piano factory on my first trip to Japan: the silence, the wood, the time given to every gesture. An athletic shoe that looks like a workshop object — there weren’t many other candidates.

Three interventions

Three interventions, nothing else:

  • ヤマハ on the quarter panel. The Yamaha name in katakana, where the eye lands first. It is the same-country rule made visible without a word of explanation.
  • The Yamaha tuning fork on the heel. The hi-fi logo, quiet, on the counter.
  • The HiFi Lovers logo on the tongue, a small stitched patch.

Two colourways are still open: a muted beige, close to the champagne of seventies Yamaha gear, and a version with strong blue stripes — the blue of the tuning fork.

The edition

Yamaha, 70 years of high fidelity, inside a company far older than that. 162 pages, 23 × 30 cm, premium paper. Available.

See the edition · Arthur Berquet

One-off piece commissioned from an independent maker. Shoe bases are bought at retail and transformed by hand. No affiliation with Nike, Onitsuka Tiger, or the makers of the models used.