The huge success of sportswear giants increasingly working with high-end designers and brands such as Alexander Wang x Puma, Vetements in collaboration with Reebok and Balmain for Nike has made unprecedented change on the future of sportswear.

Nike has now turned to haute couture designer and creative director of Givenchy, Riccardo Tisci, for its latest NikeLab collaboration. This move should come as no surprise, with sportswear giants shifting from once purely functional campaigns to something between lifestyle and performance vibes, as previously seen with the NikeLab x Sacai range, which brought life to sportswear though still remained strong to Nike’s roots. Tisci’s latest collab disrupts the classic model of athletic apparel, paradoxically presenting Olympic athletes Sanja Richards Ross and Ashton Eaton in a decidedly more high-fashion, almost holy, light.

Nike’s continual persistence to break into unrestricted markets through collaborative products interestingly has shown a huge shift in the pricing and accessibility of lines being dropped. With mass hype presented around each new collection, it’s becoming more common to see these offshoots receiving exclusive treatment, such as the Spring 14 Nike + RT Collection which was only stocked at select retailers in Milan, London, New York, Berlin, and Paris.

Check out the behind the scenes footage below.

• Words: Jordan Gogos