Bright pink is a popular color in fashion, often crucial to any good 90’s or noughties throwback look, but it historically hasn’t gotten the same love from the sneaker world. Maybe this is because there are very few sports teams that wear pink, so the sport-centric sneaker world, especially with basketball shoes, had little reason to use it. But these days in the NBA, rules over whether sneakers need to match a team’s colors are much more relaxed, so it only feels right to look back at a classic, the Air Jordan 4, and give it a modern, and colorful makeover. Check out our finished concept above and read more about our thought process behind it below.
The sneaker’s upper comes in a deep maroon base, with bright pink accents on the tongues lining, and on the wings and crowns, which also feature a metallic finish. The upper is then paired with a matching maroon and pink midsole, and a pink outsole. Lastly, the look is topped off with a white Jumpman logo on the tongue.
Whilst certain prevalent sports in sneaker culture, like Basketball or Tennis, tend to overlook colors like maroon and pink, we decided to take some inspiration from the bright colorways often present on soccer cleats. Thanks to less strenuous rules on the uniform, soccer players have often been decked out in bold colored cleats by sports brands, presumably to attract consumers’ attention to what cleats their favorite player is wearing. We chose to take the burgundy color that Nike Tiempo’s were often decked in and matched it with the bright pink that often featured on the Nike Mercurial model, most famously worn by Cristiano Ronaldo.
Our concept is reminiscent of Valentine’s Day Air Jordan 4’s that were released back in 2019, but rather than sticking a purple upper onto an all-white sole, we decided to keep the color scheme consistent across the shoe. Whilst we have seen Air Jordans in all kinds of colors by now, the sole is still almost always dominated by whites, blacks, and greys, so we thought it was important, when creating our own bright colorway, to change that. This way, the shoe stands out just that bit more, providing us with more space to add further pink highlights, giving the color a greater presence on the shoe.
