The Go FlyEase: Nike launches its first hands-free, slip-on trainers

The shoe’s accessible design centres on a bistable hinge and tension strap that allow it to switch from open to closed

The Nike Go FlyEase trainer can be put on and taken off without using your hands. Courtesy Nike

Nike has taken a significant step towards accessibility with its latest design.

The sportswear brand has unveiled its latest innovation, the Nike Go FlyEase trainer, which can be put on and taken off without using your hands.

The shoe arrives at a time when people are craving comfort in clothing and footwear (how else to explain the resurgence of Crocs?), and are also increasingly conscious about touching as few surfaces as possible over the course of their day.

Nike's hands-free trainers in action. Courtesy Nike

The inclusive product also offers a solution for athletes or non-athletes in need of an accessible design that can be used alongside numerous disabilities.

The design centres on a bistable hinge that allows it to switch from an open to closed state, while being fully stable in both instances.

The entirely lace-free “easy-on, easy-off” trainers also feature a tension band that helps to keep them in place. To put them on, you merely step into them – the movement will automatically cause them to snap shut. You take them off by applying pressure to the heel.

The entirely lace-free trainers feature a tension band that helps to keep them in place. Courtesy Nike

"The tensioner's unique flexibility supercharges an action many might take for granted (kicking off a shoe) and completely reimagines this movement as basis for accessible and empowering design," Nike said.

The new Go trainer is a natural extension of the brand’s FlyEase product family, which was envisioned specifically to create solutions that allow wearers to open, close and feel secure in a shoe using one or no hands.

This includes a host of alternatives to traditional shoelaces, from zippered uppers to cable-and-strap systems.

The trainers currently come in two colourways. Courtesy Nike

The line was first created by Nike's Tobie Hatfield, inspired by a letter from Matthew Walzer, a teenager with cerebral palsy.

Walzer wrote to Nike noting the lack of athletic shoes for people with disabilities. In response, the sportswear brand worked with Walzer over the course of three years to design the first products in the FlyEase line.

Champion fencer and Nike ambassador Beatrice "Bebe" Vio, who uses prosthetics, said: "Usually I spend so much time to get in my shoes.

“With the Nike Go FlyEase, I just need to put my feet in and jump on it. The shoes are a new kind of technology, not only for adaptive athletes but for everyone's real life.”

The Nike Go FlyEase will initially only be available via invite to select Nike members, and are priced at $120. Broader availability is planned for later this year.

"If you design for the most extreme needs, then you're unlocking benefits for everybody," said American Paralympic athlete Sarah Reinertsen. "If a shoe works for someone who has no hands, then it will work for people who have two hands."