COMME des GARÇONS Found the Air Jordan 11’s Purest Form

There’s a strange image tucked into the COMME des GARÇONS HOMME PLUS x Air Jordan 11 campaign. It isn’t an odd angle of the subtle Jumpman and CDG logos stamped into the shoe’s heel tab, or the new upper that replaces ballistic nylon with leather. 

It’s exactly the opposite: a shot that’s nothing more than a silhouette. A blur of white and black, and not even of the sneaker itself.

For a historic shoe, marking the AJ11’s first-ever collaboration, the decision to include an image that shows nothing but abstraction is bold. It’s also fitting, given that few designers know how to cut straight through to the essence of an object like CDG founder Rei Kawakubo. She’s a master of subtly tweaking enough to put a stamp on each collaboration without losing the soul. 

Just look at past Nike x CDG Homme Plus collabs as evidence. An extra bit of marbling to enhance a trippy swirl on the Foamposite here, a streamlining of the laceless-and-freaky Air Max Dolce SP there. So it checks out that the Air Jordan 11 would be treated with the same blunt reverence — if anything, more so. 

Three decades on from its 1995 debut, the Jordan 11 is arguably the most guarded silhouette in the Air Jordan archive. That Nike finally let CDG make its mark says a lot. It’s the shoe Michael Jordan himself called his favorite, and the one that a generation of millennials clamored over when they saw it in Space Jam. 

In the hands of Kawakubo, the CDG take on the revered Air Jordan 11 offers a minimally revised edit that feels like a love letter to an iconic sneaker already perfectly formed. 

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