Off-White x Nike Air Force 1 Low '07 'MoMA'
Colorway: Black/Metallic Silver-Black · Style code: AV5210-001 · Release date: September 16, 2017 · Price: $2937 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Nike Blazer Low Off Sneakers in Off (DH7863-100) · OFF x Nike Pants (CU2500-100) · Nike Zoom Haven 97 CLOT Gum Sneakers in Offin White/Off White/Sail (AO2134-100) · OFFWHITE x Nike Shorts (CU2502-100) · Nike Air Max 270 Premium Sneakers in Offin White/Off White/Pure Platinum (IO9883-104)
Art Basel has run a Miami Beach edition every early December since 2002, and it has become the week when a great deal of non-art product gets introduced to an audience that came for something else. This Air Force 1 was unveiled there in 2016.
Where it ended up is the more interesting part. It went on sale in January 2018 through the shop of a New York museum, attached to an exhibition examining whether fashion counts as modern design, which put a Nike basketball shoe from 1982 inside an institutional argument about what belongs in a design collection.
Abloh's treatment suits that setting because it is essentially annotation. The upper is black leather with a metallic swoosh; an orange tag hangs off it, a translucent zip tie sits at the laces, and white text runs the side panel. The laces themselves are printed with the word SHOELACES, and the midsole with AIR. Nothing is disguised and nothing is added that does a job; every intervention names a part that was already there.