Nike Air Force 1 Low SQT

Nike has reworked the Air Force 1, the sneaker Bruce Kilgore designed in 1982 as the first basketball shoe to carry Nike Air, by straightening its toe. The AF1 Low SQT keeps the shoe's panelling and proportions but replaces the familiar rounded front with a squared, angular cut. Price is not published yet.

The Air Force 1 has survived more than forty years by staying almost unchanged. Its silhouette is one of the most copied in footwear, and most variations have worked in colour and material rather than shape. The SQT is a rarer move: an actual change to the outline of the shoe, on the one detail that makes an Air Force 1 recognisable at a distance.

A squared toe is a dress-shoe convention, not a basketball one, and that is the point of this version. The original AF1 was built for a hardwood floor. Decades of reissues have moved it steadily toward the street, and the SQT moves it again, toward the kind of shoe worn with trousers rather than shorts. The rounded toe reads as sport. The squared one reads as tailoring, even if the sole and the construction underneath are unchanged.

What has not changed is harder to say with confidence, since Nike has not detailed the materials or construction specific to this version beyond the shape of the toe. That is worth noting plainly rather than guessing at a leather grade or sole compound that neither Nike nor its retail partners have specified for this release.