The Air Force 1 QS Wears Pony Hair, and It Refuses to Stay One Red

Nike is putting an Air Force 1 QS into SNKRS on October 21 that is covered almost end to end in pony hair. The style code is IR1940-600, and Nike logs the color as Team Red over Team Red over Team Red, the same shade named three times for upper, midsole and outsole. The press photographs do not agree. The hair reads bright red on pavement in daylight and something much closer to burgundy under studio lighting, on the same pair.

The Air Force 1 arrived in 1982 as a basketball shoe and, by Nike’s own account, stopped being one fairly quickly. The heritage note Nike files alongside this release says the model redefined basketball footwear from the hardwood to the blacktop and that it was the first basketball sneaker to house Nike Air, then adds that its innovative nature has since taken a backseat to its status as a street icon. That is a brand conceding, in its own marketing copy, that nobody buys this shoe for the Air unit any more. The distinction in that first claim is worth keeping straight, because it gets flattened constantly. The Air Force 1 was the first Nike basketball shoe built around an Air Sole unit. It was not the first Nike with Air in it. The QS designation is where the concession turns into a product strategy. Quickstrike is the limited tier Nike uses for material and color experiments that carry no collaborator’s name and no collaborator’s fee, which is exactly what a hair-covered Air Force 1 is.

Nike’s own description of the build runs to one line: pony hair on genuine leather. The photographs fill in the rest. The hair is laid over the full upper, toe to heel, with the nap running back toward the collar so the panels shift in value as light moves across them. Pale, almost white strands run through the red, which is the reason no two frames in the press set return quite the same shade. Everything else is tonal and quiet. The laces are a flat burgundy weave. The lace dubrae is metal, stamped AF1, and it is the only hardware on the shoe. The tongue label carries a Swoosh above AIR FORCE 1 in relief with no contrast color at all, and the heel tab reads NIKE AIR in the same tonal treatment. Smooth red leather handles the collar, the toe and the midsole, so the shoe runs two textures of one color rather than two colors. The outsole keeps the heritage pivot circles, also in red. The one place anything reads white is a small label set down inside the collar.

Pony hair is not a practical upper. It holds water, it takes grit into the nap, and it cannot be scrubbed the way leather can, which makes a hair-covered Air Force 1 a shoe that looks worse every time it leaves the house. Nike shot it on asphalt and a painted road line anyway, which is a decision rather than an accident. What that points at is how the Air Force 1 is being run now. The shape is settled, the Air unit has become furniture, and the thing that moves a pair is what the panels are made of. The croc-embossed pair, the pre-cracked Menta finish and now the hair are the same move repeated with different hides. Nike is not alone in it either. Saucony wrapped the ProGrid Triumph 4 in pony hair this year, so the material is circulating across brands rather than belonging to one.

Retail is $140. Nike’s current product feed puts the inline Air Force 1 ’07 between $115 and $125 depending on the makeup, so the hair carries a premium of roughly $15 to $25 over a standard pair. It lands exactly where the brand has priced its Air Force 1 ’01 reissues and the Menta pair, both $140, and below the GORE-TEX Vibram low at $150 and the GORE-TEX Vibram Mid at $180. For a material that is more expensive to cut and sew than leather, $140 is a restrained number, and it suggests Nike wants this one worn rather than stored.

The Air Force 1 QS in Team Red is style code IR1940-600, priced at $140, with SNKRS entry opening October 21 at 7:00 AM Pacific. Nike is running it as a draw with a one pair limit per account. A second colorway shares the IR1940 base under the code IR1940-800 and went through SNKRS in August, so this is the second pass at the build rather than the first. Entry runs through SNKRS, and select Nike accounts should carry it alongside the draw. Search the style code to track retailer stock as it lands.

Written by

The Sneakers Team

The Sneakers Team is the editorial desk behind becausesneakers, founded and edited by Nick Engvall. Nick has spent more than two decades in the sneaker industry. He built the original Eastbay Blog, led the first dedicated sneaker team at Complex, ran the first UGC and seeding programs at Finish Line, was employee number nine at StockX, and served as Senior Director at Stadium Goods. He hosts the Sneaker History podcast, and his first book, Small Luxuries: Sneakers, arrives in October 2026 from Motorbooks. Release details on this site are checked against the brand's own product information before publication, and anything we cannot confirm is labelled rather than stated.

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