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Nike Air Vapormax Dame
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After 2016’s take on the Air Max BW, London-based grime artist Skepta has once again teamed up with Nike on a collaborative sneaker. The Air Max 97 Sk sees Skepta reimagine the 97 silhouette, with a color palette inspired by a recent visit to the Moroccan town of Essouira — the same trip that influenced the visuals for his debut Mains collection earlier this year. Explaining the role Morocco played, Skepta said that “I found Morocco, and it was perfect. Everything I wanted to feel about peace, I found it there.” Another influence on the 97 Sk is the 1999 Air Tuned Max, which was the Nike Air Max 95 Mujer first shoe Skepta ever saved up to buy. “I wanted to bring its magic to the 97,” he says, “the magic that first made me fall in love with Air Max.”

Details on the sneaker include braided embroidery along the tongue and heel, which is a tribute to the embellished sportswear Skepta saw in Morocco, an insole print inspired by traditional Moroccan patterns, and an original Sk logo, which is a reference to the Air Max TN logo and comes in the shape of a UK electrical plug. This logo was plastered around London over the weekend to tease the as-yet-unannounced collaboration.

Skepta also explained why he was so keen to work with Air Max, and what the sneaker meant to him: “I have been wearing Air Max for so long, since I was 7 playing around in the Nike Air Max 95 Womens estate; Air Max is from when we were running the streets, it was comfortable to wear Nike Air Pegasus 83 Womens in London, whether you were going out to a club or kicking a ball in the streets.

This should never have been allowed to happen. Not because I have anything against the AM97 – quite the contrary, it is, alongside the Air Max 1, my favorite Nike shoe ever, and a number of my colleagues here at Highsnobiety share that sentiment. This could probably be scaled up to the wider sneakerhead community at large, and with good reason: it’s a truly great shoe. But still, it’s one that shouldn’t have been reissued.

I have a sneaking suspicions that everybody reading this will disagree with me and aim some really derogatory comments my way, so let me explain my reasoning.

It’s easy to see why the Air Max 97 is so adored: it’s an incredible piece of design, Adidas Ultra Boost Womens one that takes its inspiration from high-speed Japanese bullet trains. As a design Nike Air Pegasus 83 Dam school graduate myself, I was taught that this sort of outward-looking conceptualism is an essential component to truly iconic designs, and this might explain, in part, some of the sneaker’s relentless appeal.

Not only that, but the 97 is also utterly unique to the rest of the Air Max range, completely unlike the models that preceded it. Sure, it may be rooted in the 95, but an incredible amount of imagination has been invested into its design, and there’s nothing that feels lazy or imitative about it.

Putting over-intellectualized navel-gazing aside here for a second, it’s simply a good looking piece of footwear – much better than the recent Supreme x NikeLab Air Max 98, which is far too chunky and overly reminiscent of late ’90s skate shoes for my Nike Internationalist Dame tastes. That’s even before you take into account Supreme’s additions of Nike Air Max 90 Dame faux snakeskin and patent leather, materials too closely associated to budget stripper attire for most people’s comfort.

The Air Max 97 may look immeasurably better than what Supreme and Nike recently offered us, but that still doesn’t justify a reissue, in my opinion.

It may not be a popular stance, but it’s one that I genuinely believe in. I’d love to own a pair of AM97s myself, but ignoring its aesthetic value, the main thing that I find so enchanting about the silhouette is how perfectly it reflects the era in which it was made.

Late ’90s futurism seeps from every stitch, and its metallic finish is so similar to other great designs of the era, like Sony’s MZ-E900 minidisc player. They look like they were made for one another, to match harmoniously as part Nike Air Vapormax Dame of a single streamlined outfit. And this isn’t some mere coincidence, rather, it’s snapshot of a wider consciousness of the time, one that manifested itself physically in the products of that particular moment in history.
 
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