Nike Parra x Air Maxim 1+ QS 'Lonely Losers'
Colorway: Black/Black/Sport Red/Baltic Blue · Style code: 366488-001 · Release date: September 16, 2009 · Price: $550 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Nike Air Maxim 1+ (366488-002) · Nike Air Maxim 1+ (366488-004) · Nike Air Maxim 1+ (366488-005) · Wmns Puma Smash Platform SD 'Black White' (366488-02) · Puma Wmns Smash Platform SD 'Birch Gum' (366488-03)
Parra, the Amsterdam artist born Pieter Janssen, treated this shoe as a drawing surface. The base is the Air Maxim 1+, a brief spin-off that fitted Nike's Flywire to the Air Max 1 shape, and he covered it in black suede so that the only colour comes from thread and small details. Sport Red and Baltic Blue stitching runs in contrast lines across the panels, giving the pair its hand-drawn character. The midsole carries a speckle, the heel wears Nike Air lettering in blue, and the Air window in the heel is tinted to match. Released on September 16, 2009 at $150, it was the first of Parra's Air Max 1 projects.
The name fits the palette: black, moody, a little sad. It also sits at the start of a run that made him one of the model's most recognised collaborators. A year later he co-designed the Patta x Parra 'Cherrywood', a limited run made to close Patta's fifth-anniversary Air Max 1 series, and in 2018 he returned with a pastel Air Max 1 that could not look more different from this one. The Air Maxim 1+ tooling did not last, which makes 'Lonely Losers' one of the few reasons to seek out that variant today. For anyone collecting Parra's footwear, this is where the story begins.