Sole Collector x Reebok Question

This is the one that did not come from the design table at all. It came from the community, which is why it sits a little differently than everything else on the list.

The setup was a design contest run on the site with Reebok and Honda, built around the Honda Fit, long before that kind of online tool was easy to pull off. The canvas was the iconic Reebok Question, Allen Iverson’s rookie signature, one of the most recognizable basketball shoes ever made. Thousands of entries came in. The field got cut to ten finalists, then thrown to a public vote that ran from March 7th through the 25th, and when the dust settled the winner was a member named Chris Pardo.

What he came up with was clean in a way nobody had tried on the model. Multiple shades of grey across the upper, set on a gleaming neon midsole and a translucent neon outsole, which had never been done on the classic Question before. Pardo said he drew on the Honda Fit’s aggressive look and just wanted to make something that would snap necks on the street. The all suede grey look paired with those neon hits gave a familiar shoe real new life, which is hard to do on a silhouette people have seen a thousand times. For winning, he took home three pairs of his own design.

The numbers tell you how rare this is. Fewer than 20 pairs were made, with 10 going to the judges panel and the rest split between Chris and the Reebok team. So this is barely a shoe in the physical sense. It is more an idea that got built a handful of times. But the idea was the prize, the proof that a member could design something the brand would actually produce.

There is a small open wish wrapped up in this one too. A lot of us are still waiting for Reebok to take some inspiration from a project like this and throw truly new and unique color onto AI’s classic rookie model. The Question can take it. This contest pair proved that years ago.

It is also a reminder of what the community could do when given the keys. Not just talk about shoes, but design one worth making.

If you got handed the Question today with no rules, what would your colorway be?

Gallery

Photos by Nick DePaula

Part of The Complete Guide to Sole Collector Collaborations