story

"It's an Air Force 1, man. It's the perfect shoe. Air Force 1s been a part of my life, my whole life. It's like a family member. It's always with me. I always got a pair. My name is Barter, and I'm the founder of Barriers Worldwide, and welcome to New York City."

"The brand's mostly about just our history as people and relating the past to the future and doing that through concepts and different designs. What's fly to me? I would say, being yourself and being who you are. I felt like I was never a person that judged somebody on how they look, or what they was wearing. I guess..."

"...everybody had their own style, but there's was a few people who wore it in a certain way that I liked. My name is Bahr Brown. I'm originally from Brooklyn, New York, '88 St. James Place. I moved to Harlem in '95. The relationship between New York and the Air Force 1..."

"...goes back to my memory of being in high school, and there not being a lot of colorways of the Air Force 1. I would always be looking for different colorways. And different cities had different colors, mainly that triangle, Baltimore, DC..."

"...and New York. New York, of course, they call it the uptown. But that didn't come till later. To me, the relationship between the Air Force and the city of New York is hand in hand. It's tight knit. They fire..."

"...but I think I got mine. My first pair was maybe '87, '86. When you got your first pair? I'm going to have to go early 2000, maybe '03, '02. My first experience with the Air Force 1, is the all-way white tees..."

"...with the white ups. And either khakis or blue jeans. They go one and the same. Yankees and Air Force 1s is like New York staple. So you could either go a regular navy Yankee with some white..."

"...ups. Or you get a certain color up, and you can match it with the certain color Yankee. Pinstripes. Anytime you put pinstripe on anything in New York. You tell a story already. Yeah, you already know what it is."

"My favorite aspect of the sneaker is the sole. Other brands have tried to copy the thickness of an Air Force 1 sole. Just the air technology was just mind blowing when it first came out. The first pair of Air Forces I get that's..."

"...all white, Imma smell the inside. Imma lace them up. And then Imma throw them on. It's as simple as that. It's just a feeling that the shoe gives you. Growing up..."

"...I got my OG. So I see how he wearing it coming up. I'm like, "All right. Cool. That's the right way to wear it. You feel me?" But people coming up, they just buying the shoe without doing the homework on the actual product, on what they wearing. I feel like everybody got their own swag, though. You feel me? Can't really judge it. It's just them."

"... I felt the Air Forces, it started here in New York, but now it's global now. It's bigger than this now. You got to just keep the story alive, especially with New York. Because we the first people to really put it on a map. I'll find..."

"...for me, as a designer, I just seen it as, "All right. Cool." I know that now it's possible that I could do it, too. You feel me? Growing up, I never expected to see that, though, fashion brands using Air Forces as part of their..."

"...campaign. But like Bahr said before, how Virgil's doing it, it's just showing kids it's possible. Especially with Air Forces. That's a part of everybody's culture."

Behind the Design

Air Force 1 Mid Jewel 'NYC'