story

Bright Mandarin and Safety Orange

Air Max Plus x HOMECOMING

Behind The Design: Air Max Plus x HOMECOMING

My name is Grace Ladoja. I'm from London, but I live in Lagos and I'm the founder of homecoming and co-founder of metallic. And with Homecoming, one of the questions was if I lived in Lagos, could I be me?

Whenever I go to a city, I try and find myself. I want to fast track and I was like, we need to make a place where people can come in a set entry point without them having to do all that work. And I think that intention of Homecoming is to elevate the continent.

How did I get into the Nike's ecosystem? It really started when I was working at Crooked Tongues. That was a big part of it. On my own journey, I made that film representing like what was London at that time. This lacing reminds me of like when I was in school

and would put in double laces and you'll switch your laces, and there were so many right and wrong ways to do laces, but I just wanted to make something that was fun with lacing. This is a slip on shoe. If you take the laces out, you've seen it up there. It's just a cage.

So the way it's laced actually happened in the office. We each got a shoe and we had to make the lace work, so we all got a chance to, like, lace it up. Grace was like, look at him on her foot and be like, let's try it again. And so we just did that for like a cool, like 30 minutes

That lacing system you see is actually what won our kind of like what's the best lacing system. So the factory was then informed to lace it just like that. So we get out of the box that's kind of like our ideation session even for lacing. So

that's a fun little discovery moment. Like people don't see her and have lace ideations. And Nigeria specifically there's always going to be raining seasons. And when you come out of your car, you always put your foot into a puddle. Having a breathability

part of the shoes really important with then the latex zip. That was something that I felt like was really useful for when there's a rainy season and I'm stepping in these puddles

So the cowrie shell represents like wealth, spirituality, femininity and I think that those three things are really important for me. The colorways came together closer towards the end once we landed the shape

and we knew that the shape was going to work, we went into color and I think that was the most exciting thing this was based on, like the African sunrise and sunset. It's just so orange and oval, immersive and it feels quite

you know, overwhelming when you see it so that's why we have like this full orange kind of iteration. If there's one phrase I have to say that summed up the messaging of the TN. I’d say there's no place like home.