Nike Futura x UNKLE x Nike Dunk High Pro SB 'Unkle'
Colorway: Black/White · Style code: 305050-013 · Release date: September 2004 · Price: $2266 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Nike Dunk High Unlucky Sneakers (305050-001) · Nike Dunk High Pro SB 'Fog' (305050-002) · Nike Dunk High Pro SB 'Melvins' (305050-003) · Nike Dunk High Pro SB 'Pee Wee Herman' (305050-004) · Nike SB Dunk High Sneakers (305050-005)
Leonard McGurr (Futura) came out of the New York subway system in the 1970s and stood apart from his peers almost immediately by refusing to work in letters. His aerosol technique produced lines thin enough to pass for airbrush, and the results were abstract at a point when graffiti meant name-writing. By the early 1980s he was showing at the Fun Gallery alongside Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
His second career was in record sleeves. James Lavelle, who founded UNKLE in 1992 and ran the Mo' Wax label, brought him in to produce artwork for a string of releases, and that partnership became one of the more visible bridges between graffiti and British electronic music.
This shoe is the two of them on a Nike SB Dunk, and it opened the era collectors identify by the pink box the shoes shipped in. The upper works in neutral black and white with Futura's designs across it and contrasting pink on the overlays. The tooling is inverted from convention (black midsole, white outsole), which is a small joke that only registers if you know the default. It released in September 2004 at $70.