Jeff Staple x Nike Dunk Low Pro SB 'Black Pigeon' 20th Anniversary
Colorway: Black/Black-Sienna · Style code: 883232-008-XX · Price: $901 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Nike SB Dunk Low TRD QS 'Galaxy' (883232-001) · Jeff Staple x Nike Dunk Low Pro SB 'Black Pigeon' (883232-008) · Nike SB Dunk Low TRD QS 'East West Pack' (883232-441) · Murasaki Sports x Nike SB Dunk Low 'Ride Life' (883232-442) · Nike SB Dunk Low 'Reverse Reese Forbes Wheat' (883232-700)
Jeff Ng founded Staple Design in New York in 1997, running a clothing line, a design agency and a Lower East Side shop out of the same operation. The Nike SB Dunk he made in 2005 is the reason most people know the name.
About two hundred pairs existed and they were sold in New York only. What followed at the stores carrying them (queues that formed days early, police involvement, disorder that made the city papers) is the moment usually cited as the point where limited sneaker releases stopped being a subculture and became a news category. Nike SB had launched three years earlier and had already produced sought-after collaborations, but nothing at that scale of public reaction.
The shoe itself was understated: grey and off-white, with a pigeon embroidered on the heel tab, a bird chosen precisely because it is the least glamorous animal in the city.
This twentieth-anniversary version inverts it into black while leaving the construction and the heel embroidery in place. It listed at $110.