(London, UK) – (Manchester, UK)- It’s been 25 years since Manchester became one of the strongholds of the nascent UK house scene, thanks to the infamous Hacienda. The Factory Records-sponsored club was the site of Mike Pickering’s Nude Friday nights – so-called because there was ‘nothing on’, just DJs Pickering and Graeme Park playing tunes – which were the first house nights in the UK, before Shoom even. To commemorate this anniversary, Adidas are launching a special Hacienda trainer, the FAC51-Y3 .

The commemorative FAC51-Y3 trainer carries its slightly mechanical name in homage to the Factory catalogue designations that everything associated with the label was assigned. The Hacienda itself was FAC51; the Y3 refers to Yohji Yamamoto, to whose Y3 brand the shoes belong. They were designed by Factory graphic designer Peter Saville, former Joy Division / New Order bass player Peter Hook, and Ben Kelly, who designed the original Hacienda’s interiors. Presumably, Yamamoto also leant a hand with some more shoe-based expertise, though none of the FAC51-Y3 press seems to indicate this.

The Y3 brand is always exclusive, but these shoes are even more so: only 250 have been made and they will retail for £345 (approx 511 euros). For this princely sum, you get: the shoes; which come in a six-sided box shaped like a maple leaf, like the Hacienda’s dance floor; a DVD of the designers reminiscing about the club’s best years, plus the shoes will be wrapped in four sheets of tissue paper, each baring different images of the club. Two will be Kevin Cummings’s photos of the Hacienda’s late 80s heyday, one contains Ben Kelly’s original design, while the last shows the space as it is today; a block of Whitworth Street flats which still bare the name ‘The Hacienda Apartments’.

http://www.fac51thehacienda.com/