A Rose By Any Other Name is the Nike Air Force 1
Roses are cool, but they have thorns and don’t last forever. Well, at least, the real ones don’t. The next best thing is the , which gains some tasteful graphic treatments to display the universally romantic flower.
In a very creative application, the rose motif finds itself on the midsole, whereby the raised rubber strip forms the stem, then the flower is simply printed next to the AIR branding! The white-on-white pair makes this connection most obvious with the green stem, while the pink pair is a bit subtler as things are tonally red.
Otherwise, these are two clean AF-1 colourways with a simple switch to an unconventional area. Their uppers stick to the usual formula of tonal leather, officially coloured ‘White’ and ‘Pink Foam’.
For a bit of trivia, this is actually not the first time roses have featured on the Air Force 1. There was a in 2018, and old ‘heads will remember the 2002 patent leather AF-1 High that paid tribute to Rasheed Wallace (the definitive AF-1-rocking NBA player of the contemporary generation) and his at-the-time Portland Trail Blazers home court of the Rose Garden (now known as the Moda Center).
These two rosy AF-1s will release on February 25 at selected retailers. It is a bit peculiar they didn’t schedule it a fortnight earlier…