story

Hi, I'm Logan Moy, Product & Brand Director at .SWOOSH. Hey I'm Erin Kelly, Design Director at .SWOOSH. What's up this is Bryce Wong footwear designer for .SWOOSH. This is Behind the Design Air Force 1 Low '404'.

So the inspiration for the shoe actually came from a moment in .SWOOSH history. When we first launched our "Our Force 1" collection virtually, the site was so overloaded that it actually crashed.

We wanted to take that moment, celebrate it, be transparent and have a little bit of fun. That's how we came up with the Air Force 1 Low '404'

For those that were following along the .SWOOSH journey we actually released some "B-Grades" in our Our Force 1 collection. If you thumb around through the Generative collection there's a few...

...shoes that either have no laces and some that actually glitch on the upper and show a 404 Error. So we wanted to take that idea and bring it to life physically. So how can we, in this scenario, make a virtual B-Grade come to life.

So with this shoe we knew that the material exploration would be super, super important. Because it's such a strikingly simply shoe, we wanted to make sure that the material drove the narrative.

When we started off, we wanted to make sure that this thing was emulating that digital screen that we've all seen.

But once we got the first sample, we just felt like it was missing a little something. So, we ended up going with this patent leather that has a rich history within footwear but more importantly, emulates the glass screen perfectly.

The blue on the upper is inspired by the "Blue Screen of Death." And the full seamless upper is inspired by 404 Error Page Not Found but in this scenario, it's as if the upper of the shoe's not found.

So the hardest part about bringing this shoe to life was actually less about the design and more about getting the team's buy-in. Making such a drastic change to such an iconic model is never an easy conversation but luckily with this one once we got the sample in hand it spoke for itself.

This shoe merges early sneaker culture and internet culture today. As you might remember the patent seamless Air Force 1s from the early aughts. Big shoutout to our development team for figuring out how to bring this shoe back to life 20-plus years later.

This sneaker really combines sneaker culture and internet culture. So in this campaign, I wanted to make sure that we were paying homage to our digital past.

Every screen should channel that unexpected shock of a blue 404 screen and that really surreal beauty of a colorful screen glitch. The idea is that every part of this campaign feels nostalgic, surreal and irreverent.

I'm Bryce Wong, I'm Logan Moy, I'm Erin Kelly and this is Behind the Design Air Force 1 Low '404'. Coming soon only to .SWOOSH members.