The story of the legendary Apple sneaker

Before Travis Scott, before Virgil Abloh and Kanye, the sneaker game was that of Apple. Or rather, it was without knowing it was thanks to a very limited release that became a real legend in the sneaker community and now "back to life" thanks to a custom made by Andrew Chiou, sneaker customizer and Jordan employee, who combined a pair of Reebok Club C to that silhouette that in the past belonged to the same company that years later would have given us the iPhone. However, the creation of Chiou is not the first tribute made to the Apple sneaker, already revived in a custom variant in 2018 by Salehe Bembury, designer Versace at the time, who on his Instagram profile had shared a direct tribute to the shoe, revived with a series of details that replaced the Apple apple with the famous Versace jellyfish.

That sneaker, which however never officially saw the light, is yet another testimony to the charm and weight exerted by the Apple shoe. “We believe they were some prototypes made for Apple in the late 1980s or early 1990s,” said Leon Benrimon, Director of the Modern and Contemporary Art Section of Hertiage Auction. "There were probably only two pairs: one was part of the Apple archives, while the other is from a private collection." Actually the story behind the sneakers has never been clarified and a bit like a work of art it has different theories and assumptions. If according to Benrimon there are only two pairs, according to others they were given to Apple employees to end up, almost twenty years later, on sale for thousands of dollars. The last sighting dates back to 2017, when a pair of Apple sneakers was sold on eBay for 15 thousand dollars, making them the unicorn of the sneaker game.

It is certainly not the first time that Apple has ventured into an extra-technological world. In 1986 the Cupertino-based company created a collection made up of tees, polo shirts, accessories and home furnishings in an attempt to expand the Apple world to everyday life. If in that case the results were not the best, with his sneaker Apple has in his hands a potential success ready to explode. In the now daily intersection between different sectors, the hope for the community is to be able to get their hands as soon as possible on what could become the true cult release of the sneaker game.