Air Force 1 Low ‘White Gum’

Bruce Kilgore's Air Force 1 was the first basketball shoe with Nike Air cushioning when it landed in 1982. Six NBA players fronted it, but its real story was written in Baltimore, Harlem and the Bronx, where it never stopped selling even after Nike tried to discontinue it. Rap adopted the all-white AF1 as a uniform; Nelly wrote it a hit single. Now the best-selling sneaker in history with well over 2,000 colorways, the Air Force 1 is the rare shoe that is simultaneously a blank canvas, a status symbol and a cultural institution.