Collaborations serve as an opportunity for brands to branch out — to try something they wouldn’t otherwise do. Case in point? Nike’s new sterling silver-adorned Air Force 1 with famed jeweler Tiffany & Co. Nike would never slap a (true) silver heel tab on an all-black Air Force 1, especially one with a Tiffany Blue swoosh. With Tiffany’s creative blessing, though, the pair was born. Folks, that’s how these things happen.
On a smaller scale, these collaborations are more, well, one-sided: the collaborator presents ideas until Nike, for example, says yes. Or, until they say no too many times and the collab gets shelved. For L.A. store Union, and its head honcho, Chris Gibbs, his collabs come more naturally — not from a place of bold ideation, if you will, but pure necessity.
“I think the streetwear designer surveys the market, sees what people want or what is missing, and tries to fill that void,” he told Esquire in 2018. As evidenced by Gibbs’s new collaborative Nikes — two pairs of the AJKO 1 Low — he thinks the sneaker landscape is in desperate need of simpler, retro-referencing designs.
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And simple these pairs are, with a tagline that reads: “A not so disruptive sneaker for the disruptive individual.” The sentiment aligns eerily well with the messaging presented alongside Tom Sachs’s “boring sneaker,” the General Purpose Shoe. It was even presented the same way: as one of Nike’s signature “big text above a sneaker” ads.
That being said, no one is saying this is a copycat — the shoes couldn’t look more different, and both are new silhouettes — but rather that these two are on to something, and sneaker shoppers should expect “simpler but better” designs through the end of 2023. But this isn’t the first time subtlety was “in.”
