For Nike, 2017 is the 30th birthday of the Air Max.
On March 26, 2017, Nike will observe Air Max Day with a 30th anniversary celebration of the Air Max 1, the shoe that sparked air innovation in sneakers.
I remember Air Max 1s as the shoes every kid wore to play basketball after school, and the air pockets made us believe we could jump high enough to dunk. Today I wear my Nike Air Max 90s with denim and a blazer to the office — times have changed, but I still wear the same sneaker.
If an inventor named Frank Rudy hadn’t taken his invention of plastic bags inside sneakers to Phil Knight at Nike in 1977, Nike wouldn’t be the brand it is today. To pay homage to the Air Max 1 and its impact on sneaker society, Nike is releasing a mix of retro, remixed and innovative sneakers throughout the month of March.
At the apex of the 30th anniversary of Air Max 1 is the release of the Nike Air VaporMax shoe, the shoe that has been tagged the future of Air Max.
The key innovation in the Nike Air VaporMax shoe that sneakerheads and everyday athletes are excited about is the standalone outsole for unparalleled flexibility and weightlessness. Whereas the previous iterations of Nike Air Max shoes had air pockets suspended inside the soul, the Air VaporMax soles are made of air pockets entirely — there’s no foam on the soul at all, meaning the wearer will literally be walking on air. The upper is made of the FlyKnit material that makes Nike’s sneakers feel like socks.
The Nike Air VaporMax sneaker is a performance shoe, and I want it for playing tennis and running my favourite springtime 10K race. However, this shoe is also likely to become a style staple for young professionals who traded in their penny loafers for sneakers when it became acceptable to wear athleisure to work.
The Nike Air VaporMax will be released to the public for the first time at the super-secret, highly anticipated SNEAKEASY on March 25th. This event is inside a secret location and directed by Director X, the guy who directs every huge-hit music video like Drake’s “Hotline Bling” and Rihanna’s “Work” and about thousand others. SNEAKEASY is a hot ticket for sneakerheads and tickets are only available from the Air Max bus driving around Toronto throughout March.
If you can’t get a ticket to SNEAKEASY, don’t worry — you’ll be able to buy VaporMax sneakers the next day from Nike.com or in stores on March 26th for $190.