Turning five does not sound like a milestone until you remember how many things in this world never make it past year one. By 2009 the magazine and the community had been around long enough that the people who found it early were now the ones putting other people on. That is a strange and good feeling, watching a thing you loved become somebody else’s discovery.
The shoe that marked it pulled its colors straight out of the archive. Digging back through the early history for inspiration turned up an old snapshot of the site from its first days, grey and neon scattered all over the place. Anyone who was refreshing those pages late at night remembers that look. It was the visual language of the era, before everything went clean and minimal.
There was a second thread running through it too. The classic Air Max 95 colorway, grey fading up into neon, was a longtime favorite around the office, the shoe one of us wore on a very first trip to the Nike campus. Putting that energy onto the Penny II meant doing something the line had mostly avoided. The Penny series almost never strayed far from the classic Magic blues, so an all new colorblock and a fresh take on the II was a small act of nerve.
It worked. People still call it one of their favorite Pennys ever made, and hearing that never gets old. The II is one of the greatest Nike designs there is, and getting to add a chapter to it without breaking what made it great is the kind of win you only really appreciate looking back.
The grey and neon thing became a bit of a phase. You can trace it through a few projects from those years if you know what to look for. But this is the one tied to the anniversary, the one that reached back into the early days on purpose.Array
If you’ve got a pair, or just remember the era of grey and neon everything, what was the colorway that defined those years for you?Array
Gallery
Photos by Nick DePaula
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