S ummer’s here, which can mean only one thing: time for a fresh pair of kicks. Here, co-founder of the @muleboyz Instagram page Jian DeLeon picks out some footwear highlights from Sotheby’s Buy Now.
Nike Air Force 1 Low Off-White™ MCA University Blue
Virgil Abloh is one of the people who has always placed sneakers on the same playing field as high art, which is why he decided to fete the opening of his 2019 retrospective at the MCA with an exclusive Air Force 1 done up in the colours of the Chicago flag.
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Nike Air Force 1 Low Hyperstrike HTM “Brown Croc” 2007
The HTM line is an abbreviation for its three collaborators: streetwear savant Hiroshi Fujiwara, shoe designer Tinker Hatfield and former Nike CEO Mark Parker. Each has made a profound impact on elevating the culture around sneakers to where it is today, and their sought after HTM projects harken back to the days where only a select few knew how special the shoes were.
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Nike Air Force 1 Hyperstrike Scarr’s Pizza
The Air Force 1 was once considered an uptown staple, so much so that they’re colloquially known as “Uptowns”. But when DJ Clark Kent helped engineer this super-limited collaboration with Lower East Side slice joint Scarr's Pizza, it resulted in one of the best pieces of modern New York ephemera. Scarr Pimentel’s humble restaurant may not be that old (it opened in 2016), but to many people it has already become an institution of the city.
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Nike Air Jordan 1 Low Dior
Kim Jones, the men’s artistic director at Dior, featured several pairs of Nike Terminators in his first fashion show, and he’s been a longtime fan and collaborator of Nike for a while. So it made sense that when Nike decided to do the unprecedented and officially collaborate with a fashion house, that they did it with him. Melding Nike’s proprietary Air technology with the artisanal savoir faire of Dior, it's likely the most polarising shoe with a Swoosh to come out of Italy since the Air Jordan 2.
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Nike Air Force 1 Quickstrike CLOT “Blue Silk”
Edison Chen and Kevin Poon’s CLOT label has made a name for itself as a brand connecting the eastern and western worlds of streetwear. CLOT's collaborations with Nike tell uniquely Chinese stories on a global lens, as in the recurring silk motifs that began in white and in this iteration, celebrating the 10th anniversary of their 1World partnership, appear in a striking royal blue. Like its predecessors, the silk layer can be removed to reveal an etched leather upper underneath.
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Discover more at sothebys.com/en/buy-now/sneakers