Sole Collector x Nike Air Max 95 ‘Seattle’

After the Cowboy Dunk Low landed in New York, there was a real question hanging in the air. People were not at all sure an SC shoe could get any more gaudy or over the top than that. The Seattle event on March 17th of 2006 is where that question got answered.

The original idea was already wild, every rand on the side a different color and material like the Cowboy Dunk, but the Nike side came back and said push it further. So the shoe got two completely different faces. The lateral side wears a then new black buffalo print with green contrast stitching, a nod to Seattle as the Emerald City. The medial side is where it goes off. Each rand represents a color from the History of Air pack that everyone was obsessed with then, the red of the Air Max 1, the ultramarine of the 180, the teal of the 93, the neon yellow of the 95. The eyelets carry those same colors, and black speckled laces pull it all together.

So one side is restrained and textured, the other is a rainbow with a reason behind every hit. A shoe that is calm on one face and chaos on the other is its own kind of statement, and the layered panels of the Air Max 95 were the perfect place to do it. There were 300 pairs, each numbered along the medial side.

This is peak gaudy is good era thinking. There was a stretch where loud was the entire point and nobody apologized for it, where the goal was to make people stop in the line and try to take in everything happening on the shoe at once. The Seattle 95 lived right in the center of that.

The event itself was as good as the shoe. ESPN came through and filmed a segment for It’s The Shoes, going competitor to competitor, and the tables were stacked, all the way down to the winner Alan Tisch and his Fat Joe Forces and Ray Allen XXs. A lot of the Nike people came up from Portland for it. It felt like the whole sneaker world had pointed itself at Seattle for a weekend.

What is fun about it now is how it reads as a time capsule. You can date the whole mindset just by looking at it, a confidence in a shoe that refuses to be subtle and trusts the community to love it for being too much.

Were you team gaudy is good back then, and is there an SC event shoe you still think was the most over the top of them all?

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Photos by Nick DePaula

Part of The Complete Guide to Sole Collector Collaborations