With imagery of the upcoming release of the black/red Air Jordan XII becoming available this week (a belated thanks to the guys at SneakerFiles for the initial heads-up on this), one of MJ’s best playoff performances has been etched into my thoughts the last few days.
The pics of the upcoming release show that there’s a pretty significant change coming to this shoe. It may not sit well with people who were anticipating the same shoe they fell in love with in 1996-97.
Gone from the ’09 version of the shoe is the black leather that was originally on it, in favor of nubuck. Another minor change to the shoe is the stitching on the tongue. Instead of the traditional T W O 3 that runs down the tongue of the XII is the year of MJ’s flu-game (97) that he had against the Utah Jazz, where he scored 38 points in Game 5 of the Finals in spite of a stomach virus/flu/food poisoning. The point total is at the bottom of the tongue, and sandwiched inbetween the two numbers is a sick face.
Not sure if this makes it a retro+ colorway. What do you guys think?
I also wanted to draw some attention to something that the people at Converse are doing. They may have lost D-Wade to Jordan Brand last week, but they’ve got something cool going with one of their classic sneakers.
At the Converse site, you can design your own Weapon. I tried this out when the site (and color options) was still in its infancy and created the shoe you see below. Check it out, even if you just like going to these kinds of sites to work on things and look at them from a design perspective.
Jordan XII pics via SneakerFiles
