Nike Air Foamposite One 'Wu Tang'
Colorway: optic yellow/optic yellow-black · Style code: 314996-701 · Release date: November 6, 2017 · Price: $280 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Nike Air Foamposite One 'Black' (314996-001) · Nike Air Foamposite One 'Cough Drop' 2007 (314996-002) · Nike Air Foamposite One 'Cactus' (314996-003) · Nike Air Foamposite One 'Pewter' (314996-004) · Nike Air Foamposite One 'Concord' (314996-005)
The Foamposite One arrived in 1997 as a genuinely strange object: a moulded shell with no panels and no stitching, produced by pouring liquid polyurethane into a mould shaped around a foot. It was expensive for its era, and the design has barely changed since.
The yellow version is a case study in how sneaker names get made. Nike produced a small run of yellow-and-black Dunks for the Wu-Tang Clan in 1999, and that palette became shorthand for the group among collectors. When an Optic Yellow Foamposite arrived, the nickname transferred automatically, despite there being no connection between the two projects at all.
The execution is straightforward: the full shell in yellow, with black on the tongue, laces, liner, eyestay, carbon fibre shank and outsole.