Nike DQM x Air Max 90 'Bacon' 2004
Colorway: Sail/Sheen/Straw/Medium Brown · Style code: 310766-161 · Release date: January 2004 · Price: $981 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Nike Dunk High Premium 'Dqm' (323437-551) · Nike Dunk High Premium 'Dqm' (323437-441) · Nike Blazer Mid Premium 'Dqm' (317435-002) · Nike Dunk High Premium 'DQM' (323437-331) · DQM x Nike Air Max 90 'Bacon' 2021 (CU1816-100)
Dave Ortiz opened Dave's Quality Meat in New York in 2003, fitting out a skate and streetwear store as a butcher's shop and packaging goods as though they were cuts of meat. Nike gave the shop an Air Max 90 the following year, and the concept followed the decor: streaky, layered colour across the panels, standing in for a rasher. Nike listed the colours as Sail, Sheen, Straw and Medium Brown, but the effect comes from how they are stacked. Pale material runs underneath, warmer reds and pinks cut across the overlays, and brown fills the plastic panels and lace loops, so the upper looks marbled rather than blocked.
Original retail was $100, and the run was small enough that the pair became one of the most chased 90s of the decade. Nike brought it back in 2021 with updated materials, which is unusual treatment for a shop collaboration of that era. The 2004 pair is the one people mean when they say Bacon, and it is one of the few 90s better known by a nickname than by its colour names.