The Weight of the Inbetweens: Matt Galle on Loss, Legacy, and New Bala

Mowalola x Air Jordan 14: A Relic, Waiting to B...

The Air Jordan 14 designed by Tinker Hatfield and released in 1998, takes its cues from the Ferrari 550 Maranello: a crest-like badge, a sole that nods to racing tyres, and seven Jumpman logos hidden across the shoe, as if waiting to be counted. It's the shoe Michael Jordan wore for the Last Shot in Game 6 of the 1998 Finals. Few Jordan silhouettes carry that much story in that much detail. Now Mowalola Ogunlesi has taken hold of it. Born in Lagos, trained at Central Saint Martins, former design director of Yeezy Gap, she is one of the most distinctive voices in fashion today. Her first Jordan Brand collaboration is an AJ14 in Black/Burnt Red–Metallic Gold (IQ5708-001), unveiled in Paris this summer. The campaign is called "Something's Off". It's a good title. Because something is. The upper is a burnt red-brown that looks aged rather than new, as if it has already lived a life. The midsole is blacked out. Plaid appears where you least expect it: at the heel and throughout the lining, red against black. The side window, traditionally home to the shield-shaped crest, now holds a round branded emblem. Underneath, "XIV" and a Jumpman sit in deep wine red, while touches of metallic gold keep the Ferrari roots quietly in view. Alongside it, Mowalola also released a backless AJ14 mule in aged metallic silver. Then there's the lettering. "MOWALOLA" runs across the side panels in an oversized cursive script, closer to a signature than a logo. It isn't printed. It's stitched: a dotted line of thread traces every letter, so the name feels drawn rather than stamped. On the insole, the same script returns on a bordeaux-red graphic, just below the Jumpman. This matters because the Air Jordan 14 is a shoe built on logos. Seven Jumpmen, a crest, a "23", an "XIV". Everything is precise, engineered, placed with the discipline of a car designer. Mowalola answers all of it with one word, written the way you would sign something you made yourself. Cursive is personal. It's a little imperfect, a little intimate, and it never looks exactly the same twice. Against the clean geometry of a Ferrari-inspired silhouette, it reads like a name carved into something old. A mark left by whoever held it before you. And the word itself is not just a brand. Mowalola is the designer's first name. On this shoe, the brand and the person are the same thing, written in the same hand. Who drew it? Neither Jordan Brand nor Mowalola has publicly credited a lettering artist for the collaboration. What we know is that the script is Mowalola's own signature mark, and that on the AJ14 it was translated into thread rather than ink. There's something about Jordans above the 11 these days. The 12s, 13s, 14s and beyond don't carry the same noise as the early numbers, and that's exactly what makes them exciting. Picking one up feels like discovery. The tones, the lines, the details you only notice the second or third time you look. They reward attention. With this AJ14, we wanted to take that feeling further. The aged upper, the muted palette, a name stitched into its side: the shoe almost feels like a relic. Something unearthed rather than unboxed. Something that needs to be delicately discovered. So we went after that idea in a dramatic way -deep shadow. Light used sparingly, only where it needs to fall. Details revealed one at a time, the stitching, the plaid, the gold, the way you would uncover an artefact: slowly, carefully, without rushing to see it all at once. We didn't want the images to explain the shoe. We wanted them to make you lean in. Photography has always been one of the ways we think about objects, from our own shoots to the work we admire, like Paolo Roversi's Doubts. Here, the goal was simple: treat a sneaker with the patience you would give to something rare. The Air Jordan 14 was designed around speed, precision and a car built in Maranello. Mowalola slowed it down. She aged it, marked it and signed it, and turned one of the most engineered shoes in the archive into something that feels personal. Some sneakers are made to be seen. This one is made to be found. The Air Jordan 14 x Mowalola "Burnt Red" is available now at Noirfonce. Explore the rest of our Jordan collection, or read about another Jordan collaboration rooted in culture: Jordan 16 x Free the Youth.

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Mowalola x Air Jordan 14: A Relic, Waiting to B...

The Air Jordan 14 designed by Tinker Hatfield and released in 1998, takes its cues from the Ferrari 550 Maranello: a crest-like badge, a sole that nods to racing tyres, and seven Jumpman logos hidden across the shoe, as if waiting to be counted. It's the shoe Michael Jordan wore for the Last Shot in Game 6 of the 1998 Finals. Few Jordan silhouettes carry that much story in that much detail. Now Mowalola Ogunlesi has taken hold of it. Born in Lagos, trained at Central Saint Martins, former design director of Yeezy Gap, she is one of the most distinctive voices in fashion today. Her first Jordan Brand collaboration is an AJ14 in Black/Burnt Red–Metallic Gold (IQ5708-001), unveiled in Paris this summer. The campaign is called "Something's Off". It's a good title. Because something is. The upper is a burnt red-brown that looks aged rather than new, as if it has already lived a life. The midsole is blacked out. Plaid appears where you least expect it: at the heel and throughout the lining, red against black. The side window, traditionally home to the shield-shaped crest, now holds a round branded emblem. Underneath, "XIV" and a Jumpman sit in deep wine red, while touches of metallic gold keep the Ferrari roots quietly in view. Alongside it, Mowalola also released a backless AJ14 mule in aged metallic silver. Then there's the lettering. "MOWALOLA" runs across the side panels in an oversized cursive script, closer to a signature than a logo. It isn't printed. It's stitched: a dotted line of thread traces every letter, so the name feels drawn rather than stamped. On the insole, the same script returns on a bordeaux-red graphic, just below the Jumpman. This matters because the Air Jordan 14 is a shoe built on logos. Seven Jumpmen, a crest, a "23", an "XIV". Everything is precise, engineered, placed with the discipline of a car designer. Mowalola answers all of it with one word, written the way you would sign something you made yourself. Cursive is personal. It's a little imperfect, a little intimate, and it never looks exactly the same twice. Against the clean geometry of a Ferrari-inspired silhouette, it reads like a name carved into something old. A mark left by whoever held it before you. And the word itself is not just a brand. Mowalola is the designer's first name. On this shoe, the brand and the person are the same thing, written in the same hand. Who drew it? Neither Jordan Brand nor Mowalola has publicly credited a lettering artist for the collaboration. What we know is that the script is Mowalola's own signature mark, and that on the AJ14 it was translated into thread rather than ink. There's something about Jordans above the 11 these days. The 12s, 13s, 14s and beyond don't carry the same noise as the early numbers, and that's exactly what makes them exciting. Picking one up feels like discovery. The tones, the lines, the details you only notice the second or third time you look. They reward attention. With this AJ14, we wanted to take that feeling further. The aged upper, the muted palette, a name stitched into its side: the shoe almost feels like a relic. Something unearthed rather than unboxed. Something that needs to be delicately discovered. So we went after that idea in a dramatic way -deep shadow. Light used sparingly, only where it needs to fall. Details revealed one at a time, the stitching, the plaid, the gold, the way you would uncover an artefact: slowly, carefully, without rushing to see it all at once. We didn't want the images to explain the shoe. We wanted them to make you lean in. Photography has always been one of the ways we think about objects, from our own shoots to the work we admire, like Paolo Roversi's Doubts. Here, the goal was simple: treat a sneaker with the patience you would give to something rare. The Air Jordan 14 was designed around speed, precision and a car built in Maranello. Mowalola slowed it down. She aged it, marked it and signed it, and turned one of the most engineered shoes in the archive into something that feels personal. Some sneakers are made to be seen. This one is made to be found. The Air Jordan 14 x Mowalola "Burnt Red" is available now at Noirfonce. Explore the rest of our Jordan collection, or read about another Jordan collaboration rooted in culture: Jordan 16 x Free the Youth.

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Adidas BadBo 1.1: Bad Bunny, Turned Down Low

The adidas BadBo 1.1 by Bad Bunny: a bulky low-top with heritage details, shot in a music studio, plus his journey from SoundCloud to fashion.

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Adidas BadBo 1.1: Bad Bunny, Turned Down Low

The adidas BadBo 1.1 by Bad Bunny: a bulky low-top with heritage details, shot in a music studio, plus his journey from SoundCloud to fashion.

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Formula 1 Returns to Madrid: The Spanish Grand ...

F1 is back in Madrid for the first time since 1981. We lived the first Spanish Grand Prix at Madring from the Audi Club Paddock, thanks to adidas Spain.

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Formula 1 Returns to Madrid: The Spanish Grand ...

F1 is back in Madrid for the first time since 1981. We lived the first Spanish Grand Prix at Madring from the Audi Club Paddock, thanks to adidas Spain.

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Noirfonce Paddock x adidas - Making It 1 of 1

Custom adidas denim jackets, a breakfast workshop and a Scalextric track. Day 2 of Noirfonce Paddock with adidas Spain, ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix.

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Noirfonce Paddock x adidas - Making It 1 of 1

Custom adidas denim jackets, a breakfast workshop and a Scalextric track. Day 2 of Noirfonce Paddock with adidas Spain, ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix.

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Noirfonce Paddock x adidas: Running Through Madrid

70+ runners, three distances and Gran Vía at night. Day 1 of Noirfonce Paddock with adidas Spain, celebrating the Spanish Grand Prix on Madrid's streets.

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Noirfonce Paddock x adidas: Running Through Madrid

70+ runners, three distances and Gran Vía at night. Day 1 of Noirfonce Paddock with adidas Spain, celebrating the Spanish Grand Prix on Madrid's streets.

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DOUBTS - Paolo Roversi at the MOP Foundation

There is something slightly strange about having one of the world's most important photography foundations sitting in A Coruña. Perhaps because the city is not normally the first place that comes to mind when we think about fashion photography, or perhaps because the scale of what the MOP Foundation has created here still feels relatively new. Either way, walking into the MOP is a reminder that interesting things do not always have to happen in the places we expect them to. The Marta Ortega Pérez Foundation was established in 2022 with three ideas at its centre: A Coruña, photography and fashion. Since then, it has brought some of the most important names in the history of photography to the city, from Peter Lindbergh and Steven Meisel to Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, David Bailey and Annie Leibovitz. The exhibitions are free, and the Foundation has also developed educational initiatives and Future Stories, a program supporting young creatives at the beginning of their careers. It is an impressive program by any standard. It becomes even more impressive when you consider where it takes place. The MOP Centre occupies a former industrial space on A Coruña's Muelle de Batería, restored and reimagined by local architect Elsa Urquijo. What was once part of the working infrastructure of the port has become a place dedicated to looking, thinking and spending time with photography. The building itself is worth paying attention to. There is something particularly satisfying about seeing an old industrial structure retain its character while being given an entirely new purpose. This summer, that space belongs to Paolo Roversi. For anyone interested in photography, Roversi hardly needs an introduction, although his work deserves considerably more attention than a list of fashion clients would suggest. Born in Ravenna and based in Paris since the 1970s, Roversi has spent more than four decades developing a photographic language that is immediately recognizable: soft, atmospheric, intimate and often suspended somewhere between photography and painting. His relationship with fashion has been extraordinary. He has worked extensively with Dior, Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto, Cerruti, Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino, Armani and Chanel, among others, while his photographs have appeared in publications including Vogue Italia, Vogue America, W, Vanity Fair and i-D. His collaborators have included some of the most important designers and models of the last four decades, from Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto to Kate Moss, Stella Tennant, Natalia Vodianova and Saskia de Brauw. But looking at Doubts simply as an exhibition of fashion photography would be missing the point. Roversi has always been much more interested in what happens between the photograph and the person in front of his camera. His images often feel as though they have been allowed to exist rather than forced into existence. There is movement, blur, imperfection and a particular softness to the light that makes even the most recognizable faces feel strangely private. His techniques are equally important. Roversi became fascinated with large-format Polaroid in the early 1980s and has continued to explore its possibilities throughout his career. He has also deliberately embraced accidents and imperfections, including an accidental processing experiment in 1990 that produced a colour negative from black-and-white Polaroid material and opened another avenue of experimentation. His work has incorporated slow exposures, movement, blurred focus, unusual lighting and, at various points, even the use of a simple flashlight to illuminate his subjects. There is a lovely contradiction in all of this. Roversi has spent his career working within an industry obsessed with perfection, yet so much of his best work seems to come from allowing things to remain unresolved... Which brings us to the title: Doubts. For Roversi, doubt isn't something to overcome. It is where the interesting part begins. He describes doubt as an open door to creativity and imagination, whereas certainty closes it. The exhibition takes that idea and turns it into the organizing principle of the entire experience. Rather than presenting his career chronologically, Doubts moves through nine interconnected spaces: Theatre, Appearances, Shadows, Doubts, People, Presence, Grace, Beauty and Fading. Each room approaches his work from a different angle, creating something closer to a journey through his way of seeing than a traditional retrospective. The exhibition brings together around 196 works, including some of his most recognizable photographs alongside images that have never previously been shown. Perhaps the most memorable thing about Doubts is how dramatically the exhibition controls it. You move through rooms that can feel almost completely dark, with the surrounding space deliberately disappearing around you. Then, seemingly suspended in that darkness, a photograph is illuminated with extraordinary precision. Nothing competes with it. There is no visual noise around the image. You are given the photograph, and almost nothing else. Roversi's photographs already depend heavily on the relationship between light and shadow, and the exhibition seems to understand that showing them requires something more than simply putting them on a white wall. The darkness becomes part of the work. It slows you down. It changes your eyes. It makes you look at the photograph differently. That is also why the MOP space works so beautifully for this exhibition. The former industrial warehouse has been transformed without losing the feeling that it once belonged to something else. Concrete, timber, darkness, open space and carefully controlled light sit alongside photographs that were created in studios, backstage rooms, fashion houses and private moments around the world. The contrast between the history of the building and the delicacy of Roversi's work is what makes the experience feel so specific to A Coruña. It would be easy to see an exhibition like this as something that belongs in Paris, Milan, London or New York... Instead, it is here. And that might be the part we should appreciate most. We spend a lot of time talking about how lucky we are to live in Spain and to have access to so much incredible art. Doubts is another example of that privilege, but perhaps an even more local one. You don't need to fly anywhere, buy an expensive ticket or plan a weekend around it. You can simply walk down to the port in A Coruña and spend an afternoon with the work of one of the great photographers of the last half-century. Paolo Roversi's Doubts is at the MOP Foundation until September 20. Admission is free.

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DOUBTS - Paolo Roversi at the MOP Foundation

There is something slightly strange about having one of the world's most important photography foundations sitting in A Coruña. Perhaps because the city is not normally the first place that comes to mind when we think about fashion photography, or perhaps because the scale of what the MOP Foundation has created here still feels relatively new. Either way, walking into the MOP is a reminder that interesting things do not always have to happen in the places we expect them to. The Marta Ortega Pérez Foundation was established in 2022 with three ideas at its centre: A Coruña, photography and fashion. Since then, it has brought some of the most important names in the history of photography to the city, from Peter Lindbergh and Steven Meisel to Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, David Bailey and Annie Leibovitz. The exhibitions are free, and the Foundation has also developed educational initiatives and Future Stories, a program supporting young creatives at the beginning of their careers. It is an impressive program by any standard. It becomes even more impressive when you consider where it takes place. The MOP Centre occupies a former industrial space on A Coruña's Muelle de Batería, restored and reimagined by local architect Elsa Urquijo. What was once part of the working infrastructure of the port has become a place dedicated to looking, thinking and spending time with photography. The building itself is worth paying attention to. There is something particularly satisfying about seeing an old industrial structure retain its character while being given an entirely new purpose. This summer, that space belongs to Paolo Roversi. For anyone interested in photography, Roversi hardly needs an introduction, although his work deserves considerably more attention than a list of fashion clients would suggest. Born in Ravenna and based in Paris since the 1970s, Roversi has spent more than four decades developing a photographic language that is immediately recognizable: soft, atmospheric, intimate and often suspended somewhere between photography and painting. His relationship with fashion has been extraordinary. He has worked extensively with Dior, Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto, Cerruti, Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino, Armani and Chanel, among others, while his photographs have appeared in publications including Vogue Italia, Vogue America, W, Vanity Fair and i-D. His collaborators have included some of the most important designers and models of the last four decades, from Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto to Kate Moss, Stella Tennant, Natalia Vodianova and Saskia de Brauw. But looking at Doubts simply as an exhibition of fashion photography would be missing the point. Roversi has always been much more interested in what happens between the photograph and the person in front of his camera. His images often feel as though they have been allowed to exist rather than forced into existence. There is movement, blur, imperfection and a particular softness to the light that makes even the most recognizable faces feel strangely private. His techniques are equally important. Roversi became fascinated with large-format Polaroid in the early 1980s and has continued to explore its possibilities throughout his career. He has also deliberately embraced accidents and imperfections, including an accidental processing experiment in 1990 that produced a colour negative from black-and-white Polaroid material and opened another avenue of experimentation. His work has incorporated slow exposures, movement, blurred focus, unusual lighting and, at various points, even the use of a simple flashlight to illuminate his subjects. There is a lovely contradiction in all of this. Roversi has spent his career working within an industry obsessed with perfection, yet so much of his best work seems to come from allowing things to remain unresolved... Which brings us to the title: Doubts. For Roversi, doubt isn't something to overcome. It is where the interesting part begins. He describes doubt as an open door to creativity and imagination, whereas certainty closes it. The exhibition takes that idea and turns it into the organizing principle of the entire experience. Rather than presenting his career chronologically, Doubts moves through nine interconnected spaces: Theatre, Appearances, Shadows, Doubts, People, Presence, Grace, Beauty and Fading. Each room approaches his work from a different angle, creating something closer to a journey through his way of seeing than a traditional retrospective. The exhibition brings together around 196 works, including some of his most recognizable photographs alongside images that have never previously been shown. Perhaps the most memorable thing about Doubts is how dramatically the exhibition controls it. You move through rooms that can feel almost completely dark, with the surrounding space deliberately disappearing around you. Then, seemingly suspended in that darkness, a photograph is illuminated with extraordinary precision. Nothing competes with it. There is no visual noise around the image. You are given the photograph, and almost nothing else. Roversi's photographs already depend heavily on the relationship between light and shadow, and the exhibition seems to understand that showing them requires something more than simply putting them on a white wall. The darkness becomes part of the work. It slows you down. It changes your eyes. It makes you look at the photograph differently. That is also why the MOP space works so beautifully for this exhibition. The former industrial warehouse has been transformed without losing the feeling that it once belonged to something else. Concrete, timber, darkness, open space and carefully controlled light sit alongside photographs that were created in studios, backstage rooms, fashion houses and private moments around the world. The contrast between the history of the building and the delicacy of Roversi's work is what makes the experience feel so specific to A Coruña. It would be easy to see an exhibition like this as something that belongs in Paris, Milan, London or New York... Instead, it is here. And that might be the part we should appreciate most. We spend a lot of time talking about how lucky we are to live in Spain and to have access to so much incredible art. Doubts is another example of that privilege, but perhaps an even more local one. You don't need to fly anywhere, buy an expensive ticket or plan a weekend around it. You can simply walk down to the port in A Coruña and spend an afternoon with the work of one of the great photographers of the last half-century. Paolo Roversi's Doubts is at the MOP Foundation until September 20. Admission is free.

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Westside Gunn x Saucony Grid Jazz 9

There are a few artists who slowly build an entire universe around themselves and go beyond music. This is the case of Westside Gunn. Over the last decade, he has transformed Griselda from an underground label in Buffalo into one of the most respected names in contemporary hip-hop, but reducing him to "rapper" has never really done him justice. Listen to one of his records, spend five minutes on his Instagram or walk through one of the exhibitions he's put together during Art Basel and it quickly becomes obvious that music is only one part of the equation. The references never stop. Professional wrestling, Basquiat, Japanese fashion, Luxury tailoring, records, Virgil Abloh, Maison Margiela and of course... Buffalo. They all exist in the same conversation, and somehow it never feels forced. One of the things we've always admired about Westside Gunn is his ability to make people look (or listen, sometimes both) twice. His albums are full of references that don't necessarily reveal themselves on the first listen. The artwork surrounding every release is treated with the same care as the music itself, and over the years he has become just as known for commissioning painters, photographers and designers as he has for the records that accompany them. That's probably why this project with Saucony feels so natural. It doesn't feel like somebody was handed a silhouette and told to "make it artistic." It feels like another piece of Westside Gunn's world. The Grid Jazz 9 has always been one of Saucony's strongest archive silhouettes. Originally designed as a high-mileage running shoe, it has gradually found a second life outside performance, becoming one of those early-2000s models that feels just as relevant today as it did twenty years ago. Instead of stripping it back, Gunn does exactly the opposite: the entire upper becomes a canvas: pink, cream, brown and black all somehow manage to coexist without ever feeling chaotic. Like much of his work, the more time you spend looking at it, the more details begin to emerge. The packaging deserves just as much attention. Rather than another oversized collaborative box covered in logos, Saucony and Westside Gunn present the shoe inside what looks more like an object frame than a shoebox. Before you've even opened it, the message is already there. This isn't something that was designed to disappear into a stack of boxes in the wardrobe...It's something you're expected to keep. That attention to presentation says a lot about how Gunn approaches everything he creates. Whether it's an album, a vinyl pressing, an exhibition catalogue or now a sneaker, the object itself matters just as much as what's inside. There is a tendency today to separate culture into neat categories. Music over here. Fashion over there. Art somewhere else... Westside Gunn has spent years ignoring those boundaries. He's brought painters into rap, rappers into galleries, wrestling into luxury fashion and Buffalo into conversations usually dominated by New York, Paris or Milan. Somehow, it all makes sense because none of it feels calculated. They're simply the things that have shaped him. The Saucony collaboration reflects exactly that. Not because it's covered in artwork, but because it carries the same point of view that has defined everything else he's touched. The Grid Jazz 9 doesn't pretend to be minimal. It doesn't chase trends or rely on nostalgia alone. Instead, it feels like walking into someone's studio and seeing half-finished canvases leaning against the walls, books piled on tables and records playing quietly in the background. The shoe is simply another object in that room. And perhaps that's why it works so well.

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Westside Gunn x Saucony Grid Jazz 9

There are a few artists who slowly build an entire universe around themselves and go beyond music. This is the case of Westside Gunn. Over the last decade, he has transformed Griselda from an underground label in Buffalo into one of the most respected names in contemporary hip-hop, but reducing him to "rapper" has never really done him justice. Listen to one of his records, spend five minutes on his Instagram or walk through one of the exhibitions he's put together during Art Basel and it quickly becomes obvious that music is only one part of the equation. The references never stop. Professional wrestling, Basquiat, Japanese fashion, Luxury tailoring, records, Virgil Abloh, Maison Margiela and of course... Buffalo. They all exist in the same conversation, and somehow it never feels forced. One of the things we've always admired about Westside Gunn is his ability to make people look (or listen, sometimes both) twice. His albums are full of references that don't necessarily reveal themselves on the first listen. The artwork surrounding every release is treated with the same care as the music itself, and over the years he has become just as known for commissioning painters, photographers and designers as he has for the records that accompany them. That's probably why this project with Saucony feels so natural. It doesn't feel like somebody was handed a silhouette and told to "make it artistic." It feels like another piece of Westside Gunn's world. The Grid Jazz 9 has always been one of Saucony's strongest archive silhouettes. Originally designed as a high-mileage running shoe, it has gradually found a second life outside performance, becoming one of those early-2000s models that feels just as relevant today as it did twenty years ago. Instead of stripping it back, Gunn does exactly the opposite: the entire upper becomes a canvas: pink, cream, brown and black all somehow manage to coexist without ever feeling chaotic. Like much of his work, the more time you spend looking at it, the more details begin to emerge. The packaging deserves just as much attention. Rather than another oversized collaborative box covered in logos, Saucony and Westside Gunn present the shoe inside what looks more like an object frame than a shoebox. Before you've even opened it, the message is already there. This isn't something that was designed to disappear into a stack of boxes in the wardrobe...It's something you're expected to keep. That attention to presentation says a lot about how Gunn approaches everything he creates. Whether it's an album, a vinyl pressing, an exhibition catalogue or now a sneaker, the object itself matters just as much as what's inside. There is a tendency today to separate culture into neat categories. Music over here. Fashion over there. Art somewhere else... Westside Gunn has spent years ignoring those boundaries. He's brought painters into rap, rappers into galleries, wrestling into luxury fashion and Buffalo into conversations usually dominated by New York, Paris or Milan. Somehow, it all makes sense because none of it feels calculated. They're simply the things that have shaped him. The Saucony collaboration reflects exactly that. Not because it's covered in artwork, but because it carries the same point of view that has defined everything else he's touched. The Grid Jazz 9 doesn't pretend to be minimal. It doesn't chase trends or rely on nostalgia alone. Instead, it feels like walking into someone's studio and seeing half-finished canvases leaning against the walls, books piled on tables and records playing quietly in the background. The shoe is simply another object in that room. And perhaps that's why it works so well.

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What If Miró Designed the Jumpman?

Originally released in 2008, the shoe has always felt slightly different from the rest of the Jordan archive. It doesn't simply reference basketball. It connects basketball, the Olympics, Barcelona and modern art through the work of one of Spain's most important artists, Joan Miró. Now, almost two decades later, the “Miró” is returning. And for us, it felt like the perfect opportunity to ask a simple question: What would the Jumpman look like if Miró were interpreting it today? To understand the “Miró,” you have to go back to 1992. Michael Jordan arrived in Barcelona as part of the United States Olympic “Dream Team,” arguably the most important basketball team ever assembled. The Air Jordan 7 had been introduced that same year, designed by Tinker Hatfield, and its identity became inseparable from that moment. Jordan wore the model during the Barcelona Games, helping establish the AJ7 as a symbol of basketball's arrival on a truly global stage. Barcelona itself became part of the mythology. And it wasn't just because of basketball. The city was undergoing a cultural transformation, and at its centre was an artistic language that had been developing for decades. Joan Miró had spent much of his life connected to Barcelona, developing a visual vocabulary built around primary colours, organic forms, lines, symbols and an almost childlike sense of freedom. One of his most recognisable public works, Dona i Ocell — Woman and Bird — became an especially important reference point for the Jordan 7 “Miró.” Its red, yellow, blue, black and white palette is translated across the shoe in an intentionally irregular way, with colours appearing almost as if they have been painted onto the architecture of the sneaker. And then there are the Olympic references: the number 9 on the heel, representing Jordan's Team USA jersey number in Barcelona rather than his familiar 23, alongside details in the outsole referencing the Games. We've become accustomed to seeing sneakers treated as canvases. Collaborations between artists, designers, musicians, fashion houses and sports brands have become commonplace. But the “Miró” arrived at a very different moment. In 2008, the current obsession with constant collaborations and endless storytelling around sneakers hadn't yet reached the scale it has today. The original pair was produced in very limited quantities — reported at around 1,000 pairs worldwide — which only added to its status as one of the more unusual and elusive Jordan retros. Because Miró's work wasn't really about putting a few colours together. It was about reducing things to their most expressive forms. A line could become a person. A dot could become an entire universe. A shape didn't necessarily have to represent something recognizable to communicate something. Rather than simply photographing the returning sneaker, we wanted to take the idea behind it and move it forward. The original shoe asks: What happens when Miró's visual language meets the Air Jordan 7? We wanted to ask: What happens when Miró's visual language meets the Jumpman itself? The Jumpman is one of the most recognizable symbols in sports. It is already a piece of visual shorthand. You don't need to see the word Jordan to understand what it represents. So we imagined taking that familiar silhouette and giving it back to Miró. Iimagining how the symbol itself might have evolved if Miró had been the person asked to draw it. The result is deliberately imperfect. The proportions become more organic. The body becomes less anatomical and more symbolic. Limbs turn into lines. Movement becomes a gesture. The figure becomes something that could exist somewhere between a human, a drawing and a constellation of shapes. The colours come directly from the visual vocabulary associated with Miró: red, blue, yellow and black against an almost empty canvas. And importantly, we wanted it to feel painted, rather than digitally constructed. Canvas. Brush. Texture. Imperfection. Because if we're asking what Miró might have done with the Jumpman, it doesn't make sense for the answer to look too polished. This is ultimately what makes the “Miró” such an interesting Jordan. It's a reminder that sneakers can be more than objects. They can be cultural documents. The Air Jordan 7 represents a particular moment when basketball, sport, music, fashion and global culture were colliding. The 2008 “Miró” looked back at that history through Barcelona and one of its most important artists. And now, in 2026, the shoe gives us another opportunity to look backwards while imagining forwards.

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What If Miró Designed the Jumpman?

Originally released in 2008, the shoe has always felt slightly different from the rest of the Jordan archive. It doesn't simply reference basketball. It connects basketball, the Olympics, Barcelona and modern art through the work of one of Spain's most important artists, Joan Miró. Now, almost two decades later, the “Miró” is returning. And for us, it felt like the perfect opportunity to ask a simple question: What would the Jumpman look like if Miró were interpreting it today? To understand the “Miró,” you have to go back to 1992. Michael Jordan arrived in Barcelona as part of the United States Olympic “Dream Team,” arguably the most important basketball team ever assembled. The Air Jordan 7 had been introduced that same year, designed by Tinker Hatfield, and its identity became inseparable from that moment. Jordan wore the model during the Barcelona Games, helping establish the AJ7 as a symbol of basketball's arrival on a truly global stage. Barcelona itself became part of the mythology. And it wasn't just because of basketball. The city was undergoing a cultural transformation, and at its centre was an artistic language that had been developing for decades. Joan Miró had spent much of his life connected to Barcelona, developing a visual vocabulary built around primary colours, organic forms, lines, symbols and an almost childlike sense of freedom. One of his most recognisable public works, Dona i Ocell — Woman and Bird — became an especially important reference point for the Jordan 7 “Miró.” Its red, yellow, blue, black and white palette is translated across the shoe in an intentionally irregular way, with colours appearing almost as if they have been painted onto the architecture of the sneaker. And then there are the Olympic references: the number 9 on the heel, representing Jordan's Team USA jersey number in Barcelona rather than his familiar 23, alongside details in the outsole referencing the Games. We've become accustomed to seeing sneakers treated as canvases. Collaborations between artists, designers, musicians, fashion houses and sports brands have become commonplace. But the “Miró” arrived at a very different moment. In 2008, the current obsession with constant collaborations and endless storytelling around sneakers hadn't yet reached the scale it has today. The original pair was produced in very limited quantities — reported at around 1,000 pairs worldwide — which only added to its status as one of the more unusual and elusive Jordan retros. Because Miró's work wasn't really about putting a few colours together. It was about reducing things to their most expressive forms. A line could become a person. A dot could become an entire universe. A shape didn't necessarily have to represent something recognizable to communicate something. Rather than simply photographing the returning sneaker, we wanted to take the idea behind it and move it forward. The original shoe asks: What happens when Miró's visual language meets the Air Jordan 7? We wanted to ask: What happens when Miró's visual language meets the Jumpman itself? The Jumpman is one of the most recognizable symbols in sports. It is already a piece of visual shorthand. You don't need to see the word Jordan to understand what it represents. So we imagined taking that familiar silhouette and giving it back to Miró. Iimagining how the symbol itself might have evolved if Miró had been the person asked to draw it. The result is deliberately imperfect. The proportions become more organic. The body becomes less anatomical and more symbolic. Limbs turn into lines. Movement becomes a gesture. The figure becomes something that could exist somewhere between a human, a drawing and a constellation of shapes. The colours come directly from the visual vocabulary associated with Miró: red, blue, yellow and black against an almost empty canvas. And importantly, we wanted it to feel painted, rather than digitally constructed. Canvas. Brush. Texture. Imperfection. Because if we're asking what Miró might have done with the Jumpman, it doesn't make sense for the answer to look too polished. This is ultimately what makes the “Miró” such an interesting Jordan. It's a reminder that sneakers can be more than objects. They can be cultural documents. The Air Jordan 7 represents a particular moment when basketball, sport, music, fashion and global culture were colliding. The 2008 “Miró” looked back at that history through Barcelona and one of its most important artists. And now, in 2026, the shoe gives us another opportunity to look backwards while imagining forwards.

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The Weight of the Inbetweens: Matt Galle on Loss, Legacy, and New Balance

1. Who are you, and what’s brought you to this point?

2. If you had to divide your life into chapters, how would you do it?

3. Do you think you’ve "made it"?

4. How do sneakers fit into your life now?

5. And why New Balance specifically?

6. What does the future look like for you?

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What If Miró Designed the Jumpman?