The Air Jordan 41 Came Straight Out of MJ’s Garage (EXCLUSIVE)
A new mainline Air Jordan sneaker is to basketball as a new iPhone is to tech. This is not only the future of the most famous brand in town, but the future of hoop shoes as we know it.
And yet, behind the gloss and sheen, there's a distinctly human element. And I'm not just talking about Michael Jordan (although His Airness was surprisingly involved with the new shoe's design).
Although only two members of Jordan Brand visited the Highsnobiety offices in early August, brand-new Air Jordan 41 sneakers in tow — to their immense credit, they personally lugged the duffel bags full of sneakers and samples — they represent only a small fraction of the blood, sweat, and tears that informed the finished product. This is a shoe, yes, and a good fraction of Nike's quarterly report depends on it being a much-loved shoe. But it's also a testament to pure effort.
So it goes for the entire line of flagship Jordan sneakers, and the man himself. Everything from the Air Jordan 1 up to this, the Air Jordan 41, represents much more than shoes.
And so, when I spoke with Leo Chang, Senior Creative Director for Jordan Sport and Basketball, and Donald "DK" Kelsey, Senior Director of Jordan Basketball Footwear, I was initially more interested in talking about that under-sung human aspect. We all know the shoes. What about the hands behind the scenes? We still ended up discussing the sneaker at hand, but I'm glad we were able to dig a little deeper into one of sportswear's great achievements.
Oh, and the Jordan 41's similarity to a Jordan 23 is pure happenstance: "You're not the first person to say that," laughs Chang. "But it's just one of those happy coincidences."
Leo, let's start with you. Give me a little background that led to you working with Jordan Brand.
Chang: I dreamt of working at Nike and Jordan when I was a kid. Growing up in Philadelphia, I was always an artist. I was probably drawing more than I talked and that combined with my love of sports naturally led me to really love sneakers. This was back in the '90s, which is one of the most revered eras of Nike and Jordan. I couldn't afford them but I had a lot of friends who had Air Jordans, the best Nikes.
And now you've been there for 25 years. What're some of the projects you've overseen?
Chang: People would know the work I've done across Nike basketball. KDs, early Kyries, I worked with Kobe a little bit, LeBron a little bit. Prior to that, I was on running, doing some of the Nike Frees, like the 3.0, 7.0, 5.0 V2s. I even did some Shox and had a hand in helping out the legendary Sergio Lozano on the Air Max 2003.
Beautiful. So, DK, give us a little intro.
DK: I'm originally from Chicago, so by default, I was a Chicago Bulls fan. And in terms of my biggest inspirations, I'll reference Allen Iverson, who gives credit to Michael Jordan. MJ was my north star.
I've been with Nike for 19 years, the last 16 of which have been in product management. I've specifically been with Jordan Brand for almost 11 years and spent the first eight and a half in the retro business. And I'm one of the few product managers to have worked across all three product types in the company: footwear, apparel, and headwear.
Any specific projects you want to call out people might recognize?
DK: Well, it's a collaborative effort so it's tough to single anything out. But when I worked on hats, I was part of a great team that really expanded the line. If you think way back, no one really wore Nike hats. And I got to work on everything from signature basketball athlete hats, like Kobe and LeBron to NikeLab — if you remember that — where I oversaw collaborations with brands like Supreme and Nike ACG with Errolson [Hugh, founder of ACRONYM].
Perfect. So, you guys know product. Can you describe the feeling of knowing when something's "done?" Like, what makes a good product?
Chang: I'm a big self-critic, and so I don't ever feel like the products are ever done. [laughs] But also, by the time we're at the end stages, I'm usually pretty tired of them. Something is done when it's performing well, it's testing well, the aesthetic is finishing nicely, and we're really sweating the details, like the colors and graphics. Once we're obsessing that, we're close to being ready to go.
But you don't want to put out a mediocre product. You want to put out something you're proud of. That's been a really great learning, being like "Let's take a pause. It's not ready yet. Let's make sure it's right."
What's something that might cause you to take a pause on a product?
Chang: It could be pushing a new construction that's just not sitting right or maybe the upper's wrinkling weird. It could be an irritation point or heel slippage.
It's a team effort. We gotta make sure that everyone. from marketing to design to engineering to development, is aligned enough to say that we might not hit a deadline.
DK: There are so many people who add to a shoe. And it's my responsibility to make sure the expertise of the entire team is being poured into the project. Along with Leo, I protect the team and empower that.
But we also have financial targets. The shoe has to make money. We'll collectively look at the cost options and be like, "OK, what's the hero item? What do we wanna save? What can we discard?" We have finance people in the room. They might be like, "We're $15 over target. What are we gonna do?" That's where creative comes in, that's where design comes in, and engineering comes in.
Even when you're up against the clock, you've still gotta talk details.
DK: We look at every single detail on the shoe. Every single one. On a shoe like this, it was like — well, take this rivet right here [gestures towards top of shoe]. There were 10 different finishes on the rivet. The shank had 10 different finishes. We had over 70 iterations of the nano print [the pattern that covers the sneaker's upper]. We probably spent two weeks just on where one eyestay would sit. Everything's in millimeters.
Chang: We had a conversation around the eyelets, about using internal webbing, lacing, or punching through the upper. We even took the conversation to Michael Jordan himself — the team explored like six lacing options and brought it to MJ.
So, MJ is still part of the production process?
DK: Oh, yeah. We get product testing feedback from a lot of our athletes, including Mr. Jordan himself.
Chang: MJ talked to us about how every piece of the shoe had to be intentional. "No gimmicks," he said. A lot of the past Air Jordans have been bold but simple designs. You can close your eyes and draw some of the best ones, right? We want that philosophy to carry through.
For the 41, one of the things that MJ said was, "How do you make the shoe look like it's moving even when it's standing still?" You see that with the nano print on this shoe, how it feels like it's in motion. There's a fluidity to it.
I'm kind of a Jordan sneaker layman but I know a lot of prior Jordans took cues from sports cars — this one looks like it did, too.
Chang: For sure. We actually went to MJ's garage, which houses like 60+ amazing supercars. Some are one-of-ones. Being able to like see them up close was incredibly special, especially as a designer. I was able to obsess over how they engineered it. Some of those principles ended up in the shoe.
Like, you can look through some of the cars' back hood and see a hint of the engine inside. It gives you a peek to the engineering, right? So, that's why the shank [in the sole] is clear, letting you see into this beautifully finished fabric-wrapped midsole and a hint of the new Zoom Air heel.
Any other MJ stories around this shoe?
DK: For the Air Jordan 41, we looked at the 40 and asked ourselves: What was really good about that shoe? Where could we improve? And then we'd go out and talk with athletes around the world.
Specifically, we talked about the greatness of MJ's game, and how if you want to be a player on that level, you have to be great not only on offense but on defense. So, we talked to MJ and he broke down exactly how he plays defense. And it's like, he hasn't played in 30 years! But like his knowledge and his experience is absolutely still relevant to the current generation.
Also, there's something about meeting with Michael Jordan. Whenever we met him, he'd always be early. We'd even try to beat him there and he'd still get there earlier. Not only that, he's always hospitable and gracious with his time. If the best basketball athlete that the world has ever seen can do that, then that sets the tone for everybody else.
Amazing. Okay, back to the shoe. What was the hardest part of the AJ41 to pull off?
Chang: The nano print. I mean, there were a lot of things. But this seems so simple and yet is actually an intensively layered print, so each time we changed something, that changed the printing process.
But in a world where everything is highly scrutinized, we have to take it all into consideration. Some people will call your bluff on internal tech. They'll buy a shoe, cut it open, and look inside. We made sure that if the 41 does get cut open, everything is finished. Some people may think it's silly, but I think if somebody's taking the time to do that, they clearly care or are at least curious about our product.
We've always seen hoop shoes worn casually — goes without saying, really — but I've noticed a real revival of basketball shoes crossing over from court to street in a way that we haven't seen in years. Just me?
Chang: No, it makes sense. Think of all the designs from 20+ years ago that felt heavier, bulkier, more intimidating, more uncomfortable. These new shoes are sleeker and I think it helps make that jump, as you said.
DK: But, also, I think people tend to apply a kind of revisionist history. Like, we understand that corporations didn't guide kids to wear hoop shoes off the court or hiking shoes off the trail. That was a cultural thing. That's a neighborhood thing. People made those decisions based on how they wanted to express themselves. So, we can't control people making that choice or try to contrive that feeling, right? That's something we're aware of, because this conversation comes up a lot.
Chang: Yeah. And I want to say, in terms of working on a performance product, you can't fall in love with the aesthetic because, if it all blows up on the court, you have to rethink things, right? We always start on the court, but we also have this design philosophy we call "effortless versatility," knowing that these things have to transition to real life, too.
There will be times when a kid can only afford one shoe, and they gotta go to school in that, they gotta go hoop in it, they gotta go play in the playground in it. So, we're thinking, how do our products transcend the court?
Speaking of, before we go, give me one last big goal you had for the 41. What's one thing you want people to take away?
DK: We don't want to be predictable. When you think about the early Jordan shoes, you couldn't predict them.
Like, on the Air Jordan 10, they did a white/black colorway, yeah? Then next year, the AJ 11 comes out and it's like — wait a minute, they did white/black with Concord [dark purple]? There's no purple in the Bulls jersey! Wait a minute, it's got patent leather. Never seen that on a shoe! And then, you get to the AJ 12, where it's white/black and Taxi Yellow. And there's lizard skin.
We talked a lot about getting back to the unexpected. Plus, back when those shoes were coming out, there were no retros. That's a feeling we're trying to reinstill. It's a whole new chapter. People forget that we were always a performance basketball brand first, retro came second.
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