Nike Air Max 90 QS 'ACG'
Colorway: Multicolor · Style code: CN1080-200 · Release date: February 15, 2020 · Price: $174 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Nike Air Max 90 QS 'ACG' (CN1080-500) · Nike Air Max 90 (IR1979-010) · Nike Air Max 90 (Indianapolis Colts) (IW1137-001) · Nike Air Max 90 (Chicago Bears) (IW1138-400) · Nike Air Max 90 (Houston Texans) (IW1135-100)
ACG stands for All Conditions Gear, Nike's outdoor label, and its visual language is built on high-visibility colour blocking drawn from hiking and climbing equipment rather than from running. Applying it to the Air Max 90 means the panels stop matching each other and start functioning as separate signals. The result is one of the busier arrangements the silhouette has carried, with multiple tones distributed across the toe, the mid-panels, the mudguard and the heel. The 90's own design helps here: it was drawn in 1990 with more separately colourable sections than most running shoes of its era, which is exactly what an ACG palette needs.
Nike released it in February 2020 at $140 as a Quickstrike, the label the brand uses for narrowly distributed runs, so it never reached the volume a general release would. Underneath, nothing is modified for the outdoors. The visible heel Air unit, foam midsole and waffle-pattern outsole are all standard, which makes this a colour project rather than a technical one.