Street Fighter x Nike Dunk Low Pro SB 'Chun Li'
Colorway: Argon Blue/White · Style code: 304292-405 · Release date: August 16, 2010 · Price: $1239 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Nike SB Dunk Low Supreme Cement (2002) Sneakers (304292-001) · Nike Dunk Pro Low SB 'Gino 2' (304292-002) · Nike Dunk Low Pro Sb 'Ostrich' (304292-003) · Nike Dunk Low Pro SB 'Carhartt' (304292-004) · Medicom Toy x Nike Dunk Low Pro SB 'Medicom 2' (304292-005)
Nike SB spent the 2000s building its Dunk program on outside references (skate shops, films, foods, cities), and in 2010 it went to a fighting game.
The Street Fighter pack ran to three shoes, each keyed to a character: a Dunk Low for Chun-Li, a Dunk Mid for Ryu, and a P-Rod 4 High for Akuma. The Chun-Li version takes her blue costume literally, in argon blue nylon across the forefoot and side panels, with suede overlays in the same shade, and puts her likeness on the sockliner where it stays hidden in wear. White laces, white branding and a gum outsole finish it.
The Dunk itself long predates any of this. Peter Moore designed it in 1985 as a college basketball shoe, built to be issued in team colours; Nike’s skateboarding division picked the shape up in 2002 because a flat, durable, reinforced-toe basketball shoe happened to suit skating, and rebuilt it with a padded tongue and a Zoom Air insole.
That combination (an eighties team shoe, a skate rebuild, a video game licence) is characteristic of what SB was doing at the time.