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Adidas NMD: built from the archive, disguised as the future

When the NMD appeared in December 2015, it looked like a shoe without a past. The opposite was true. Designer Nic Galway took three archive models from the mid-1980s — the Micropacer, the Rising Star and the Boston Super — and combined their recognisable elements onto a full Boost sole. The name is short for Nomad: a shoe for someone who moves through the city all day.

NMD is also a family name, not a single model. By far the largest part of this page is the NMD R1, the first and best-known member, with its own page. There are also the R2, the XR1, the laceless CS1 and its successor CS2, and the Pharrell Williams branch NMD Hu. Generations like the R1 V2 and V3 don’t have their own pages — you recognise them by the title and by the details that shift between generations.

One thing they all share: the two separate plugs inserted into the Boost midsole. The front one is ribbed like a radiator grille, the other often carries the brand emblem, and several versions have printed markings on them, as if they were shipping labels. Those plugs are the archival reference: a nod to the colour blocks of the 1980s models, here reduced to separate components in the foam.

Beyond that, the members vary widely. The XR1 places a plastic cage with a mesh window over the instep, the CS1 removes the laces entirely and becomes a knit sock with a pull tab, and the R1 V2 sets a translucent panel with multilingual print on the midfoot plus a large, closed block at the heel. This page mixes all those variants; the individual pages explain what you actually get from each member.

On release the NMD became the face of the Boost years: first scarce and fiercely contested, then ubiquitous, now a design with its own archive status — a bit of history for a shoe that itself was cut from the archive. If you prefer the same foam in its sporting role, look at the UltraBOOST: identical cushioning material, but on a running last.

On this page you can see which versions of the Adidas NMD are currently hottest according to the Hypescore, the starting price, and how many shops have them in stock.