In five years of collaborating, Matthew M. Williams' 1017 ALYX 9SM and Nike have produced some truly experimental sneakers.
Its previous releases include the Zoom MMW 4, a bulky, hyper-futuristic sneaker with big holes cut out into the sole unit, and the Free TR 3 SP, a technical running shoe with a removable Vibram sole unit.
So, when Williams post a very ordinary upcoming Air Force 1 on his Instagram in November 2023, it came as a bit of a surprise.
"There were people when I began this venture who were like, 'why are you doing this? There’s no reason to buy this shoe. It’s not different enough from the regular one,'" Matthew M. Williams tells Highsnobiety shortly after the sneakers released.
The designer – who recently announced he'd be leaving his role as creative director of Givenchy to focus more on the future of ALYX – believes that the simplicity of the AF1 is its strength, and he's even made memes to prove it.
Spread out around the pop-up shop are print-outs asking people to spot the difference between the regular AF1 and ALYX's version.
"In a way, I feel like this is much more extreme than doing something super loud," continues Williams. "It’s actually so easy to do something really loud with different colors, big stitching, changing the sole, making it look crazy."
"There’s a good quote that says perfection is when you remove everything possible. And when you remove one more thing, the essence of that object or design will not remain anymore. I think we’re getting close to that in this: if a little bit more [of the shoe was to be] removed, it would lose the essence of the AF1 or not be an ALYX."
Matthew M. Williams describes the small changes he has made to arguably Nike's most recognizable sneaker as "subtle interventions," the most notable of which is that the paneling on the side has been reduced to make for a cleaner look.
Elsewhere there's also a touch of ALYX branding on the lateral heel, a metal element added to the lace eyelets, and the whole shoe is decked in a new, premium leather.
"I wanted to do something very timeless," says Williams. "I tried a lot of iterations of different paneling until I landed on this one. And even the shapes of toe boxes, I was looking at original catalogs when the AF1 was released, working on different elements of those shoes and adding them to this.
"Then there’s a different leather for the black and the white AF1s, that after wearing and doing various trials with different leathers, I felt aged in the best way."
The trial and error that Williams has gone through to get to this final design was partially done publicly. Back in January, images of the ALYX creative director circulated with him wearing a different version of the shoe, although he was quick to comment on Highsnobiety's Instagram post that the pair was a "work in progress."
Now, almost one year later, Williams has perfected the formula and finally released his latest Nike collaboration in early December. It's a change from what we're used to seeing from the collaboration and a show of ALYX's versatility: "You know we can do the Zoom 4 and you know we can be super innovative. To approach a timeless shoe like this, it’s nice to be playing in both arenas," adds Williams.
The brand has more collections in the pipeline with Nike, with the designer hinting toward a training and yoga clothing capsule that will arrive soon as well as him teasing a puffer jacket and cap over on Instagram — both of which are all-black with minimal branding.
This Air Force 1 release, along with the clothing also teased on Instagram, does beg the question of whether the ongoing Nike and ALYX collaboration is taking a new, more minimal route. However, based on what the designer has to say about his creative method, that seems unlikely.
"I think it’s important not to have too much of a routine in the design process, or else sometimes it yields the same result. We get comfortable in our routines," he explains.
"Going on 20 years of doing this, I felt — maybe a decade in — that I have a very comfortable way of going into the design process of footwear, or clothing, or graphics, whatever it may be. And then I started to find ways to break that routine."
