London label A-Cold-Wall has been building plenty of its own buzz since launching in 2015, aided in part by head designer Samuel Ross’s time prior to forming the label under the tutelage of designer Virgil Abloh. However, the news of the label collaborating with NikeLab on an Air Force 1 silhouette was enough to guarantee off the chart buzz levels for coverage of the young label’s fall 2017 presentation.
First revealed on A-Cold-Wall’s Instagram account, the shoes subsequently were worn by both male and female models walking the label’s runway. Stripped of cumbersome details and reconstructed with tone on tone fabrics, the shoes were the perfect underpinning for the collection’s artful blend of industrial workwear and suiting for a futuristic and fresh take on high-end street.
Speaking on the collaboration, Ross said he pushed Nike for unprecedented design changes on the classic shoe. “We took away the eyelets, stripped off the tick and woven label, we also embroidered on a section, which hasn’t had a external logo placed before, suede and leather skins were reversed to matching tones and textures that form the building blocks of A Cold Wall’s narrative. We really pushed for these details, which seem small, but are huge when working on such an iconic shoe,” said Ross in an interview with Hypebeast.
Ross didn’t say for certain whether or not these shoes will hit retail, but one has to guess they will become available though probably in very limited pairs.