Nike has filed a lawsuit against MSCHF Product Studio, Inc. for trademark infringement due to the company’s partnership with musician Lil Nas X in producing a highly controversial shoe. The company and Lil Nas X transformed black and red Nike Air Max 97s into “Satan Shoes” which coincided with the music artist’s latest music release “Montero (Call Me By Your Name).”
The shoes contain a drop of human blood taken from MSCHF employees which are mixed with red ink in the mid-sole air bubble and are priced at $1,018 to mimic Luke 10:18 from the Bible which reads, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven,” a verse reference also depicted on the shoe.
The limited 666 pairs of “Satan Shoes,” which were sold out in under a minute, are also embellished with bronze pentagrams, upside-down crosses, and the nonconsensual Nike Swoosh logo, which confused the public into thinking that Nike helped produce the shoes.
Many consumers of Nike products threatened to boycott the company due to the notion that Nike was endorsing satanism, but Nike released a statement on March 29 declaring that it had no affiliation with the making of the shoes:
“This was done without Nike’s approval or authorization, and Nike is in no way connected with this project.” The sportswear company continued to say in their statement that they did “not have a relationship with Lil Nas or MSCHF.”
The controversy first sparked when the “Old Town Road” singer released a video snippet of his new single “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” which depicted Lil Nas X sliding down a stripper pole into hell and provocatively straddling and dancing over the devil in his music video for the song.
In 2019, Lil Nas X came out to the public as gay, and the song is said by the artist to be an ode to his 14-year-old self, who had sworn to keep his sexuality a secret, and a clapback to religious individuals who oppressed him for his sexuality and commented that he would go to hell.
Lil Nas X responded to the backlash with a post on Twitter saying, “I spent my entire teenage years hating myself because of the (expletive deleted) y’all preached would happen to me because i was gay,” the singer wrote. “So i hope u are mad, stay mad, feel the same anger you teach us to have towards ourselves.”
Nike specifically did not name Lil Nas X in the lawsuit.
“MSCHF is deceiving consumers into believing that Nike manufactures or approves of the Satan Shoes, and consumers’ belief that the Satan Shoes are genuine Nike products is causing consumers to never want to purchase any Nike products in the future,” reads the lawsuit.
The music artist posted a video on Twitter titled “Lil Nas X Apologizes for Satan Shoes” where he is shown beginning an apology, but immediately cuts to his music video’s Satan lap dance portion.
With Nike shares being down 0.4% at $133.00 during premarket trading on March 30, the company is expecting all shoes to be destroyed in compliance with its complaints.
