This weekend saw a return for an old friend for the feet from the planet’s most iconic sports-shoe brand.
Nike’s Air Jordan line has certainly been keeping active, making sure that while the regular NBA season is on hiatus, that basketball shan’t be ignored.
Nike have gone retro and dropped the Air Jordan 5 Fire Red 2020, and doesn’t it look recognisably swish?
The 5 Fire Red was released on May 2, with a retail price of $200, and its colour scheme tributes its original arrival exactly three decades ago.
There’s of course the icy outsole, the subtle stylish flames on the side, and black midsole. 5 Fire Red has a white leather base and red and black detailing on the sock liner, tongue, midsole, and heel.
The pièce de résistance is a welcome-back to the gigantic Nike Air on the heel, that returns to the shoe after 20 years, in red on white. ‘Jumpman’ instead adorns the tongue.
The Air Jordan 5 was first released in February 1990 at a retail price of $125. Four models of the Air Jordan 5 were released to the public, including in White/ Fire Red-Black from which the 2020 edition takes its cues. The Air Jordan 5 was the first in the Air Jordan line to have a clear rubber sole, and was said to have been modelled on a grey nurse shark (sneakerfiles).
At the time, each model was originally limited to only 100 pairs each, and were auctioned off to raise money for various charitable causes, and also, heart-warmingly, provided to disadvantaged children.
Hot on the heels (pun most definitely intended) of the Air Jordan 5 Fire Red 2020 release, last week revealed the news that the Air Jordan 15 - tentatively titled ‘Gym Red’ - will sizzle this summer for Nike’s lucrative billion-dollar footwear market.
With ‘The Last Dance’ currently occupying the sports fan’s attention, it may have been nearly 20 years since the great Michael Jordan last shot a professional basket, but Netflix and Nike have once again reaffirmed that nothing, no one compares to His Airness.
