Nike designers spent the last four years developing the shoe, which looks like half sock, half traditional soccer shoe. It’s a strange-looking piece of footwear, but this odd form has a purpose.

Nike gloves. Vapors. Socks pulled above the knee. It’s a look ingrained in millennial culture by Thierry Henry, circa 2003-04, whose on-pitch style personified “va va voom.” You knew you ...

The first time you slip on a Nike Flyknit–technology that weaves together a shoe’s upper half–you may swear that you’re really wearing a sock. And so as Flyknit technology makes its way to ...