NIKE Air Force 1 – The most important shoe in the world?

The AF-1 came on the market in 1982. At the time, the Air Force Ones were groundbreaking – they were the first basketball shoe to have the Nike Air cushioning. The designer was the artist and sculpturist Bruce Kilgore (also responsible for a number of other breakthrough designs at Nike).

The AF-1 started as so many sneakers as a simply well-designed shoe. It was not until the Hip-Hop community declared the AF-1 model „white-on-white“ as their chaussures d’CEO. While in business the handmade shoes from Budapest or Venetia might be the non-plus-ultra, in the Hip-Hop community the AF-1 „white-on-white“ became suddenly the sneaker that makes the difference, it became a bold statement expressed by the suddenly hyper-rich bosses of the Hip-Hop industry like the P.Diddys and Jay-Zs in this world.

So the AF-1 today is a lot: a well designed sneaker, history, style, a fashion statement, but most important it is possibly the only sneaker in the world that is a demonstration of power as well! So all you CEOs get your AF-1s!

Some facts and figures:

The Air Force Ones are still the top selling model of Nike shoes and are only behind the Converse Chuck Taylor and Adidas Superstars for most sold sneaker model in history.

In the nearly 30 years of existence Nike sold more then 15 Million pairs of AF-1

Amount of money to advertise the AF-1 in the last 30 years: 0$

Number of different AF-1 designs: around 1700