story

"I'm not a formerly trained designer. I didn't go to school for this. Whatever you're passionate about, to be able to pour yourself into it and develop a career from that is a blessing."

"Peace, I'm Chris Gibbs. This is Behind the Design of the AJKO 1 Low collaboration with my brand UNION."

"The genesis of the inspiration behind this collection was late 80s Black and Latino fashion, specifically coming out in New York and what I was seeing."

"Early on, they made the AJKO out of canvas because canvas would be cheaper than leather and thus make the shoe more accessible. And they called it the AJKO as in AJ knockoff. "

"So, in essence, we've created a knockoff of a knockoff.
This is the first of its kind."

"The AJKO, I think was the second shoe in the kind of Jordan history, and they only made it in a high, and that's kind of the shoe we've known for the last, I don't know, 30 or so years."

"And this, we're really proud. I'm proud to be involved in being the first to introduce a low version of that shoe."

"What people know us for is taking apart the shoe, and I didn't want to do that, especially this being the first one. I wanted the first version of this shoe to be as pure as it could be."

"You can't change a shoe that hasn't been out yet. And so where there's some bells and whistles where we were a little bit disruptive and tried to be creative..."

"...we included a removable swoosh and we include multiple colors in that to have a little fun. We continued our zigzag stitch details on the tongue and kind of on some other places on the shoe."

"If I had to describe the AJKO Low in one word, I'd use two: instant classic."

Behind the Design

AJKO 1 Low X UNION