Sole Collector x Nike Dunk ‘Cowboy’

Some shoes you remember for the colorway. This one you remember for the line. New York, November of 2005, four or five days of people wrapped around the block in the cold and the rain, until at one point they moved the whole line into the atrium of Niketown just to get everyone out of the weather. That is the kind of devotion that defined the early events, and the Cowboy Dunk Low was what everybody was standing there for.

It is probably the most polarizing shoe Sole Collector ever made, and that was the point. Every single panel is not just a different color but a different material. Black snakeskin, reptile, suede, white ostrich, pretty much every hide and texture under the sun stacked onto one Dunk. The original idea for the outsole was clear, but that could not happen, so it landed on a gum sole instead, picked specifically because it did not blend with anything else on the shoe. A speckled midsole tied it together, and the number of each pair was lasered right onto the side.

There was a quieter companion too, a Yankees inspired Dunk in navy with white patent and contrast stitching for that pinstripe look, the safe one to balance the chaos. But the Cowboy is the one the blogs covered and the one people still argue about.

The detail the design heads love is the blocking. The panel where the Swoosh intersects the side is actually two separate pieces, something most people never notice. So instead of blocking the Dunk the usual single color way, it got split down the middle, one piece a completely different material and color, the heel different again. Nobody had really blocked a Dunk like that before, and that was the whole reason for doing it.

When it dropped, a lot of people did not know what to make of it. Too much for some, an instant classic for others. That split reaction is exactly what makes it last. A shoe everybody agrees on gets forgotten. A shoe that divides the room gets talked about for twenty years.

It is still a little hard to believe Nike signed off on doing the Dunk that way, and that is part of the charm. A loud, ridiculous, every material at once Dunk made back when the rules were still being written.

Were you in that New York line in the cold, and which side were you on, was the Cowboy Dunk too much or an instant classic?

Photos by Nick DePaula

Part of The Complete Guide to Sole Collector Collaborations