Nike Air Force 1 Low Retro 'Taiwan' 2018
Colorway: White/Varsity Red-Midnight Navy · Style code: 845053-105 · Release date: February 17, 2018 · Price: $587 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Nike Air Force 1 Low Retro 'Chi-Town' (845053-001) · Nike Air Force 1 Low Retro 'NYC' (845053-002) · Nike Air Force 1 Low Retro 'University Red' (845053-100) · Nike Air Force 1 Low Retro 'Summit White Game Royal' (845053-102) · Nike Air Force 1 Low Retro 'Los Angeles' (845053-103)
The Air Force 1 is the most heavily recoloured shoe Nike makes and one of the least redesigned. Bruce Kilgore drew it in 1982 as a basketball shoe, and its significance at the time was structural rather than visual: it was the first basketball model to carry the company's Air cushioning. Production actually stopped in 1984 and the shoe returned in 1986, after which it never left. By 2007 it had appeared in more than 1,700 colour variations and was generating around $800 million a year.
What almost none of those variations touch is the swoosh, which is normally a single flat colour and functions as the shoe's fixed point. This version breaks that rule deliberately: the swoosh is graduated, shifting from red at one end into blue at the other, and the two shoes are not matched to each other. The colours point at the Taiwanese flag.
The rest is restrained by comparison. White patent leather covers the upper with perforations across the toe box, the tongue badges are embroidered in red, and the outsole is a pale translucent blue. It released on 17 February 2018 at $130.