Sole Collector x Nike Air Max 180 ‘Miami’

During the run of Niketown events in the mid 2000s, the launch shoe for each city drafted off the place it was landing in. That was the whole charm of the series, a different shoe with a different local story in each town. The Miami stop, January 20th of 2006, produced one of the more playful ones, and it came from letting the right person take the lead.

This was the first running silhouette Sole Collector ever worked on, an Air Max 180, chosen partly because the History of Air pack was huge at that exact moment. Retrokid sat this one out, and the concept came together from the SC art side and Nike’s Cowboy instead. What they built was a gator. A green croc texture wraps the upper over green suede, a pink Swoosh sits on the side, the gum toned outsole stands in for an alligator’s belly, and the pink ties back to a gator’s tongue. The insole was designed in house by SC art director Kerstin Carter. The whole shoe is an animal if you know where to look, head to tail, belly to mouth.

There is a star worked onto the toe too, with perforations around it, a small homage back to the Cowboy series the events had been building. Little inside references stacked on top of the gator concept.

The honest note from the time is the best part. A theme like this does not always survive translation, meaning not everyone is going to look at the shoe and immediately see the alligator. And that was fine. Because beneath the concept, it was simply a hot shoe. The gator story is a bonus for the people who get it, and the colorway works even for the people who do not.

There were 180 pairs, fittingly, each one numbered on the heel, and they sold out fast. It has since become one of the hardest Sole Collector shoes to find, because so few of them were out there to begin with. A gator hidden on a forgotten Air Max, made for a Miami crowd that probably caught the joke faster than anyone.

The Air Max 180 itself almost never shows up in collab conversations, which makes this one feel like a small secret.

Which of the city themed Niketown event shoes was your favorite, and did the local concept land for you or did you just like the colorway?

Gallery

Photos by Nick DePaula

Part of The Complete Guide to Sole Collector Collaborations