story

My name is Thibaut de Longeville, I am the co-founder and creative director of the Quai 54 basketball tournament. I am Erin Le Gros, I am the material 

designer on the men's footwear team. Hi, my name is Matthias Bannon, I am senior graphic designer for Jordan brand. It is the 20th anniversary of Quai 54, so it is a little different than any other thing that we 

may have done in the past. Over the past eight collections I think we have been exploring the links between African inspiration, historic connection with the African American culture. The main inspiration 

is around the African diaspora, celebrating those fans. They are the ones that have kept the tournament going. The majority of them, I would say 95% of them share the same African roots. There are basketball players, there are

entertainers whether we are talking about rappers, or DJs, or dancers, there is a lot of creatives. There is a sense of togetherness that is quite precious. I think apparel had originally kicked off the creative

direction. In terms of materials we were given a color palette from the apparel side. I wanted the materials to capture the saturation, the vibrancy and just really celebrate the

color palette as best as I could through the materials. I think when they come to Quai 54, there is a notion of being flamboyant, and expressing yourself, looking your best. That is something we take a lot of pride in. For us to 

have attached our history to this really iconic product, silhouette of the AJ2. I wanted to make sure that we were using premium, silky suedes and buttery leathers. There is a 

special hangtag that has the double X that commemorates those 20 years in the game. So we took the OG AJ2 with the embossed wings logo and just skinned it with the amazing graphics that you find across the entire

collection. There is a lot of hand drawn elements that we brought. We wanted to give some familiarity, so keeping that iconic iguana embossed leather on the upper, and then to elevate the product further. There is 

a conscious effort made, especially when designing the footwear and selecting materials, that this would be a genderless and inclusive offering. If I was going to summarise the collaboration between Jordan brand and the Quai 54 group

Behind The Design

Air Jordan 2 Low Quai 54