HISTORY OF THE GEOBASKET

Rick Owens never set out to make sneakers. In the early 2000s, he designed a high-top so he could exercise, and in the process created his first sneaker: the Dunk. Its exaggerated proportions, swooping stripe, and inflated tongue would become famous. Soon after, rumors spread that Nike had sent a cease-and-desist. Whether it was legal drama or the most elegant PR stunt of all time, the Dunks disappeared, and the Geobasket was born.

The Moog Dunks (2005), also known as the proto-dunk. 

Owens has always claimed that sneakers bored him. They represented normalcy, the opposite of his aesthetic. To design one was almost an act of rebellion. He described his goal not as making a shoe, but as making “monster trucks for his feet”. The result was a silhouette that lived somewhere between sculpture and sneaker, a cartoonish distortion of athletic footwear.

While many assumed Owens was copying Nike, his inspirations came from elsewhere. The familiar swoosh-like curve was also a reversal of the Puma stripe, while triple rows of stitching nodded to Adidas. He was less interested in imitation than in mutation, taking sportswear and bending it until it looked strange. The sneaker wasn’t meant to blend in, but instead spark conversation.

What the Geobasket ultimately pioneered was the idea of sneakers as luxury objects. Before Owens, few brands dared to price sneakers above a thousand dollars. His Dunks and Geobaskets set that precedent, elevating trainers into the realm of couture. That legacy was cemented with his 2013–2017 collaboration with Adidas, which mainstreamed his warped vision. Today, the Geobasket remains less a shoe than an artifact: part provocation, part monster truck, all Rick Owens.