I remember the first ad campaign for the Air Max. You just had the picture of the shoe and this light coming through it. And then I found out, 'wow, there's a story behind this.' Emotional connection is like super important cause it's like the story telling behind the design. If you look at the Air Max as a line, and not look at them as shoes, and look at them as personalities you'll see such a variety going on. It speaks to people in so many different ways. Air Max is the greatest sneaker line in history. It became a cultural icon without an ambassador. For a shoe to last this long it just has to look right, and feel right when you put it on. What happened when they put full air across the bottom of a shoe? That was mind-blowing. When you're bringing out a new Air Max, no one's certain if it's gonna work. At Nike you have the most driven people in the world. These athletes that have changed the game, all these artists. It's just this hotbed of just inspiration, creativity and it gives you new perspectives on innovation. The idea that you're pushing forward and experimenting with the possibilities. It's something that I think you're obligated to do as an Air Max designer. So the brief was really to imagine what the future of Air Max but specifically the Air Max 90 could be. And that became the big insight around the Air Max 2090. As a team we started to recraft the Air Max 90 as a starting point to create the 2090. It was our responsibility to rework on this shoe just to pay a tribute of the past. But a lot of sneakerhead loves this shoe and sometimes it's just like, ok don't change anything because it's one of our most iconic of all the franchise. You never can touch an icon. It's like you drive a car from the '60s and you will rebuild the car nowadays, it will never be the same. That sort of tension comes from an older generation holding on to something that's near and dear to them. OGs, historians have such a tangible relationship with that moment with the shoe that they can't get over that this new generation is changing it, modifying it. The debate is how there's a lot of older people be like, 'Oh these young people don't know anything, that they weren't around for it first time round.' There are some guys of a certain age who don't validate that a kid can like something just 'cause he likes it. But my thing is well, how does it keep going if the kid doesn't get told the story for him to be attached to it? We talked about handing things down and now when we're designing a new Air Max we're making it for this new generation. So they have their own thing to stand with. But they can look back in the past and celebrate that as well. And that's a goal for the 2090. The visible air all started in 1978. An aeronautical engineer by the name of Frank Rudy came to Phil Knight with this idea of a cushioning system and it's almost weightless. But it wasn't until 1987 where everything changed. With the Air Max 1, the potential of what running footwear could be, it changed the game. I fell in love with Air Max 1s as soon as they happened. The air bubble, What the hell is this? What the hell are these? You can look through that shoe? You could see the air. Just the red. Blue of course too. Should I get red? Should I get blue? You want them both. You could kind of see the beginning of what Nike was going to become, this innovation house of making the impossible possible. And Tinker, I think was the person that set it off. Tinker Hatfield, he's the G.O.A.T. Tinker Hatfield is the sneaker oracle. The God of shoe design. Tinker was in Paris and saw the buildings and he figured out how to get that look and that idea inside of a shoe. Because you have to know there was air on sneakers before that. There were Air Ships. There were Air Force. But they just said Air. Yeah but why not just show it. You know, it's not a bad idea to let people actually see what an air bag looks like. As a matter of fact I've got a drawing here that actually shows what a shoe could look like with a visible window in the heel. When the idea of exposing air started getting around at Nike people started freaking out. Nike thought that Tinker was out of his damn mind. So that bit was like a hole in the shoe. It wasn't an air. It was a hole in the shoe. People were like, 'Oh, it's not gonna work.' It's impossible.' Cause you just couldn't understand how you wear these shoes and those bubbles weren't gonna pop. There were some people that didn't want them there. People thought this was gonna bring down the company. Tinker got very scary post-it on his laptop saying that he should stop what he was, like, doing. Like, Tinker was fighting a battle with everybody about this shoe. He embodied that whole rebel, revolution aesthetic. The '80s were about revolution. If this Cold War was happening, the wall was coming down, all the political upheaval, and that was this kind of birth of this idea. Really everything's about to change. I was born in Eastern Germany and it was not possible to get a cool pair of shoes. So the only chance to see that was on TV, illegally, because Western TV was forbidden. It was just the thing you could see it but you could never buy it. But after the wall came down all the people from Eastern Germany got 100 Deutsche Marks, and I took my first 100 Deutsche Marks, and I bought my very first pair of Nikes. Nowadays I have about 2000 pairs of Air Max. I was fascinated about the big bubble. I never saw that before. After all that years, it was just an amazing feeling to get Nikes finally. And then, 90s. That was the Empire Strikes Back of the Air Maxes. The Air Max 90 was almost like a school in design. You had the iconic window that framed that bag. There's leather and that mesh. It was just bulletproof. Up till today it's continued to endure because of its simplicity. There's never been a blend or bleed of the midsole up into the actual shoe and, it was different. There was these hints to some of the Italian sports cars at the time. Aerodynamic fins. The use of the infrared. It wasn't regular red. And there wasn't an influential person, an athlete that amplified the popularity of this shoe. It was just a dope shoe. For a shoe to last this long, the corniest guy in the world has to be able to put it on and you can go, He got the good shoes on though. If he puts on a pair of Air Max 90, Infrared 90, he's still corny but he nailed it though. From a lifestyle and cultural standpoint, it took on something of its own. I feel like Air Max has been able to stand because of music and hip-hop, and hoods, everywhere. I have a love affair with sneakers. You know me and sneakers go way back. I am from The Bronx and at school Nike was a status symbol. So you came in walking with some Air Max, of course, you know, you fire, you got the latest. But I used to watch the kids on my blocks simply because they had the fire sneakers on. They're the real fashion icons, for me. I am a DJ. I am a sneaker junkie. And I am not even from Brooklyn, I just am Brooklyn. And when I wore Air Max it was definitely, 'What are you doing?' You have to understand, it's not like Air Max took off when they came out, not in the hood. We was still wearing basketball shoes. Air Max started as a running shoe, sure it did, it's just that, just like anything, once the hood gets it, it turns into something different. Cause runners go, 'Oh, there's a 93 now.' 'There's a 95 now.' 'I need the new one.' The hood's going, 'Do they look good?' I grew up in the coolest time, '70s, '80s and moving into the '90s. That was the coolest time of cool. In 1990 hip-hop was going crazy. And sneakers are part of the uniform. And but when you go to Europe there's Air Max everywhere. The hip-hop state of mind is you trying to figure it out. You wanna have what he has and make it your own. So we claiming and we claim it with pride the Air Max 1 and the Air Max 90. When that shoe came out it's also around the same time I discovered hip-hop music. The way I grew up was in a very traditional sense. Especially for Asian kids. Like, I do good at school become a doctor, become a lawyer. And my whole thing growing up was go against the grain, be difficult and do what I love instead. And maybe wanting that sneaker was one of the first steps in that whole process. We started Patta, me and my partner, Guillaume Schmidt. In Europe we had different pairs that nobody else had. But I'm a DJ first, from '80s till '90s up to now, till I had all these records. When I first saw an Air Max shoe, was probably on somebody's feet. But when I saw it on a record cover, 'What are those?' 'Where can I get them?' When a subculture decides to adopt something as their own then that's your way to find like-minded people, like, you're not alone. We are the early adapters. That's typical Dutch. It's like, 'Ah, yeah, let's make it our own version.' Then the gabber came. Gabber music. Gabber culture goes hand in hand with huge raves, like stadiums full of crazy kids going hard all night. And with that style of house they came with uniform, tracksuit with some BWs. Raving all night, you cannot go with, like, wooden shoes. Air Max is all about you're on your feet all day long, you're going out all night, you're gonna destroy this thing but then you gotta do it again tomorrow, and the next day. And how's this thing gonna hold up for that? All over the world music was evolving but I always go back to London, that was always really the kind of kick off. I was a kid that grew up listening to drum and bass and garage, and was surrounded by that. And when it came time to making our own music we used the same platform as them but then we add our own identity. Right in the beginning, I didn't have a name for what I was doing. I used to turn up to raves, I wanted to just get on the mike so I could MC. That's what it was about. But in other clubs you weren't allowed in without shoes and a shirt. Where grime came into the game was like the rebellion to that. Because we come in dressed straight off the street. But then eventually we took over the whole building and it became the biggest thing. You'd find it hard to talk about grime and not find a relevance to Air Max. I'm wearing them on my most iconic album cover. But I didn't think it would start no big movement, I'm just wearing them. I'm from the area where people don't really walk around in, like, suits. That was one of the things people would cuss you about if you didn't have good trainers on. You might not have all the money in the world but you got the right pair of trainers on. Like, you're someone. Literally every artist would be wearing 90s, 95s. You see your favorite artist wearing a pair of 95s you wanna go out and buy those 95s. This is a layered shoe. It's like material on top of material on top of material of top of material. Sergio Lozano was the designer on that shoe. He was inspired a lot by the human anatomy. The rib cage, the tendons, the muscles, and you can really see it. This is the first time of an Air Max having that forefoot air unit. That was groundbreaking in itself. People were like, 'woah.' It's the first Air Max having a black sole. People were going like, 'You don't do this, like running shoes have white midsole.' But having Nike here in Portland, our shoes are getting dirty, we're running trails, then why not make this built into the design. When 95s first came out in London they were called the 110s because that's how much they cost. Why they called 110s? Cause they cost a hundred and ten pounds. People did things to get money and one of the first thing they did was buy trainers. There is a huge sense of pride in where you're from and what you wear. So you'd always see people wearing, like a full tracksuit and a pair of 90s or 95s, like that was the look, and it still is, it's not changed at all. The 95 looks nothing like the 90. Every time a new staple Air Max comes out it's an entirely different experience. I am a sneaker historian. And I remember as a kid me trying to find a way to raise $9.99. 'Mom, can I wash the dishes?' 'Mom, can I shovel snow?' 'Mom, can I do whatever to get my shoes?' And if you take the Air Max lineage, in phases, it's hard to single out like one particular shoe in the line that makes it more special than the other. But it goes back to the design because it's unlike anything before. Like, asking me what my favourite Air Max is, is basically like asking which child do I like the most? But the 97s. Oh, that's a good shoe. This is the first shoe that had the full length air bag. It's like... When Christian Tresser designed that shoe he brought another point of view to that water drop. And there's something so subtle and beautiful about that. This is the classic. I probably have six more pair of this Silver Bullet Air Max 97. The same exact colorway. What did you see? You saw Silver Bullets. The 97 was huge in Japan. The bullet train in Tokyo is this transportation system that was revolutionising the way that people moved. The shoe began to do the same thing. The culture gave it that nickname and it stuck because it was the vision of the future. 97, it's a very Italy shoe. For that sense of luxury that speaks the perfect balance between performance and design. My whole career has been in the magazine fashion industry. And there's been this big shift in fashion where it's all about streetwear. There's an emotional attachment to sneakers and depending on where you were in life when that sneaker dropped, what you were doing, what music you identified at that time, that will influence your sneaker choices. When you have that clean aesthetic that's recognizable and I think it becomes a canvas for people to kinda put their play on it. I think as soon as all these artists started coming in, it just becomes this art piece for culture to play with and say like, 'This is how I do it.' This is basically the genesis of my working with sneaker brands career. With Dizzee Rascal being given his own pair of 90s I feel that was like the pinnacle of grime and London. Still don't know how that came about. They must have just done some talking and asked me if I wanted to do it and I just said, 'Yeah, obviously.' It's like massive privilege, What? Design my own trainer? Nike came of course, they were like, 'Yo, your shoe.' We did four pairs, and it came out. And it just blew up for us. It was beautiful. Air Max 1 we considered our shoe, that's our uniform, that's Amsterdam. So, there would not be another option. It's either the Air Max 1 or no collaboration. For me the Air Max is seen as revolutionary. It's giving visionaries a voice. And I love that. I was able to design the sneaker with Nike by You and when given this opportunity I knew straight from the bat that I wanted to incorporate my full time career as a mental health therapist. I do therapy with kids in foster care so I'm constantly surrounded by trauma. I have sneaker decals on my office wall so it's really cool when I have teenagers come into my office and be like, 'Yo Miss Liz, you have some drip.' I have fallen in love with Air Max ever since I was a kid. In the high school I went to sneakers were kind of a refuge for me. For me I think the most iconic sneaker that warms my heart are the La Mezcla designed by Gabrielle Serrano. I was born in Queens. I work in the medical field. I have like younger kids coming in and they're like, 'Oh my god, you're like the cool nurse that wears sneakers.' I wanted to make it not just a shoe about myself. That's why I ended up doing all the different skin tones
to highlight everybody in New York. The Air Max, even though it's meant for performance it's just taken on a whole new evolution. When you have that canvas everyone loves it, they feel connected to it. The '90s was like the golden age for Air Max. And I think now, looking back, we're kind of going, 'Let's do that again.' I don't think there's such thing as creating icons, icons just happen. Just like when somebody goes, 'Oh, I'm gonna go in the studio, this song's gonna be a classic,' you're a liar. Either it just happens or it doesn't happen. For a sneaker to become an icon people have to make it the icon. I do believe that you can take something iconic and make it better. As long as you have the respect for what came prior. I don't think the new generation has their own shoe, in that same sense that we had. Our generations should encourage younger kids to do stuff your own way. We're not growing up in this time. Regardless of what a designer or Nike wants to make it, it's the culture that makes it what it is. There's history of where Air Max came from but it's uniquely modern and uniquely now. That's what this is. This is the new generation of Air Max. This is made for them. We kind of thought about the future of cities, the future of fashion, reducing distractions and this idea of simplicity. Not like just doing a mash up of two shoes, it was really to create the new Air Max 90. It's this very sensitive balance between having something modern and something familiar. You have this duality between expression and experience. This is why people relate to the shoe. This what makes Air Max, Air Max. We're celebrating anniversaries for shoes that when they were making them they thought they were gonna go away. Oh yeah, these are fire. The only reason why these things keep going is because the story keeps getting told from an older guy to a younger guy, to a younger guy, to a younger guy. And it still looks perfect. Are these for me, yeah? Air Max already unites people. That's why we here, that's why we have this conversation. You will find a 17 year old kid rocking a regular Air Max and that's a shoe that came out in the '90s. For it to resonate through generations, you know, families, grandmas, my mom has a pair of Air Max, I have a pair of Air Max and it'll stand the test of time. I know that for a fact. This isn't just Nike's. This is everybody's. The only rule The only rule Of Air Max Air Max Air Max is to break Break Break Break the rules.
Feels like they avoided gabber as much as they could to not ruin the flow and style they were going for in that 24 minute 'ad'.
Thanks for sharing