story

It's just an icon. We started off in Philly with the championship season, Baltimore, bringing back the Air Force 1, and then with New York, bridging the gap between basketball and street culture. There you have it.

To make anything that's like that in any genre to make something like that lasts through generations is like remarkable.

I think SB's been a chance to be part of the Air Force 1 history, the timing couldn't be better, you know, we did the Jordan 4, we did the Air Max 95. This is definitely the next chapter.

One of the main things of re-engineering in an Air Force 1 or any shoe, we got to make sure that it works for skate, so we have to look at the midsole, the outsole, the treads, the uppers, and see how we can make it right for skateboarding.

With the midsole, the super iconic part of the shoe, we started looking at ways how to enhance it but not take away from how it really looks. They did an amazing job of looking at the actual forefoot, bringing it down 8mm.

Your foot lands lower in the sole. The look hasn't been taken away. When it comes to grip, we ran multiple tread exercises to get the right round groove. This right here to the right is what you see normally in NSW, and then this one is where we landed. They're kind of like sandwiched in a little bit tighter.

it's like a good mix between good board feel but still nice to walk around in. Tha crumb too I really do like. I'm not gonna lie, it's pretty sick. Looking at the reinforcements of the tip, to make sure you do have that board feel in comparison to what you see normally in Air Force 1.

I think really the difference between the suede and the leather is the biggest in terms of like how the grip differs when you're skating the shoe. Working with the material designer, since they used the pig skin Nubuck, one of the things I wanted to do is to make sure the colour I chose complement the material.

I used a Light Orewood Brown for the upper. This right here is a rice little reset that I wanna introduce in skateboarding. I didn't wanna overpower with so many different colours. I wanna make sure that it was right for the skater and for them to wear it toe down, you know, make it feel great as well and just to make sure that this is the first chapter for many more colourways to come.

It's sick to see like such an original silhouette revamped and like made better for skating, but the ste stays there it's still like super stylish. I think that's dope. This shoe is such an iconic shoe that it kind of makes sense. You can reimaginme them in any different season and they just get reborn again with a whole new generation. Shout out to the SB! - They killed it.

Behind the Design

SB Air Force 1 'Light Orewood'