Mac McRae

This is a Jor­dan 34. It has auto-lac­ing and light-up airbags. I focused most­ly on design­ing the soles. They are sup­posed to rep­re­sent alien tech­nol­o­gy from ran­dom 80s sci­fi movies. The future is only cool when you see it focused through the lens of dif­fer­ent decades. The only brand­ing on this sneak­er is the tiny jump­man on the sole. The idea is to make the upper dis­ap­pear so that you focus on the visu­al­ly intri­cate airbag. If you see the ear­li­est ads for air­max you can see how the airbags appear to be emit­ting light. That is the obvi­ous nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion of air.

Vapor­max is not very cool. This is a new direc­tion that is influ­enced by old sil­hou­ettes like the orig­i­nal Pega­sus — a shoe that is com­plete­ly beau­ti­ful and time­less. The sole length airbag con­forms to the shape of a tra­di­tion­al run­ning shoe sole. This is a retro look­ing Vapor­max with mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy and mate­ri­als.

This is a lim­it­ed edi­tion Nike Air Max run­ning shoe crossover with Supreme. It has a giant trans­par­ent red air bag that is made of red Flub­ber and a trans­par­ent mesh upper that lets you show off your lim­it­ed edi­tion Supreme socks. Nikes Supreme shoes miss the bus. They don’t cap­i­tal­ize on the Supreme brand cor­rect­ly and pay homage to the ground­break­ing work of Bar­bara Kreuger. Supreme is red and white only with gar­ish, obvi­ous and repete­tive brand­ing in Futu­ra Bold. It is about what it cuts out — not what it includes. The font and rep­e­ti­tion does the work — not the iron­ic shoe sil­hou­ettes or cli­part graph­ics. It is amaz­ing how some brands have tran­scend­ed sim­ply being a logo on appar­el and have become part of a state­ment about pop­u­lar art. A state­ment about Amer­i­can cul­ture — even when it is invent­ed by a British guy who is copy­ing the work of an Amer­i­can lady.

This is a 90s sit­com col­or­way for the Jor­dan 34 Bas­ket­ball shoe. It has gar­ish 90s col­ors designed to speak to 90s kids. The only brand­ing is a tiny Jump­man on the out­sole. The lights in the airbag glow teal and pink. The airbag is filled with a gas that blinks bright opaque pink as your foot strikes and tran­si­tions back to trans­par­ent teal as your foot ris­es.