Nike ZoomX Vaporfly NEXT% 'Be True'
Colorway: White/Guava Ice/Black · Style code: AO4568-101 · Release date: October 22, 2019 · Price: $336 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Nike ZoomX Vaporfly Next% 'Black' (AO4568-001) · Nike ZoomX Vaporfly NEXT% 'Hyper Jade' (AO4568-102) · Nike ZoomX VaporFly NEXT% 'Ekiden White Racer Blue' (AO4568-103) · Nike ZoomX Vaporfly NEXT% 'Electric Green' (AO4568-300) · Nike ZoomX VaporFly NEXT% 'Valerian Blue' (AO4568-400)
Two separate programmes meet in this shoe. The first is Be True, which Nike began in 2012 as an employee-led project and turned into an annual Pride collection. It ran for more than a decade and raised several million dollars for LGBTQ causes in the United States before the brand stopped producing it after 2023.
The second is the Vaporfly. Nike launched the ZoomX Vaporfly NEXT% in 2019 ahead of the London Marathon, where Eliud Kipchoge and Mo Farah raced in it. It combined ZoomX foam with a full-length carbon plate, the formula that had come out of the Breaking2 project, and within months Brigid Kosgei used it to take the women's marathon world record in Chicago. The sport's governing body opened an inquiry into whether shoes of this kind conferred an unfair advantage.
That is an unusual place for a themed colorway to land. This pair was released in October 2019 at $275, on the shoe the sport was arguing about.