Nike‘s Doernbecher Freestyle program turned 22 this month, and the most surprising thing in the collection is a mold. Owen William Flint, a patient at OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, was handed the Air Max 1/97, a hybrid that has reached retail almost exactly once in its life. He covered it in mud splatter, hung a brass dirt bike off the lace, and put his baseball number across the midsole. The pairs went to auction in Portland on October 16 and reach SNKRS this winter.
The Air Max 1/97 exists because of an internet vote. In 2017 Nike ran Vote Forward, a public contest to decide which designer’s Air Max went into production, and Sean Wotherspoon won it with a corduroy build that set an Air Max 97 upper over an Air Max 1 outsole. It drew limited in November 2017, returned for a wide release on Air Max Day in March 2018 under style code AJ4219-400, and then the mold mostly sat. Outlets have written the name both ways since, as the 1/97 and as the 97/1, and Nike’s own Doernbecher release settles on Air Max 1/97, which is the spelling used here.
What makes the hybrid worth noticing is how little Nike has done with it. It was conceived as a one off, voted into production, sold through, and then left alone for the better part of a decade. Handing it to a patient-designer is the first real reason the tooling has had to exist in years. Nike says all six silhouettes in this year’s class are making their Doernbecher debut, so the 1/97 is not the only mold being used here for the first time, but it is the one with the strangest road behind it.
The upper is brushed leather in red, gold and black, colors Nike says nod to the superhero fandom Owen shares with his brother. Mud splatter runs back from the toe cap across the waved panels, and it is the detail that carries the shoe from across a room while being exactly the thing a feed thumbnail flattens into noise. The midsole carries 88, his baseball jersey number, in a stretched face the design team built to suggest motocross movement. On the medial side, lenticular graphics shift the way sequential panels do in a comic book.
The accessories are where the nine month process shows. A brass dirt bike keychain hangs off the lace, heavy enough to photograph like jewelry rather than like a hangtag. The lace dubrae is a spinning wheel, which the program’s copy frames as a reminder to keep life moving. The sockliner is printed with a dirt bike diamond plate graphic, set against what Nike’s own text calls his kidney warrior toughness. Owen also specified a second lace option in red and gold splatter alongside the black and gold pair with gold tips, and the press set photographs both laid out on their own.
Doernbecher Freestyle has raised more than $49 million since 2004, with every dollar of profit going to the OHSU Foundation, and close to 370 Nike product creation employees have volunteered across the program’s life. The structure is the part the industry never copies. Six patients a year fill out questionnaires, then work through rounds of color and material review with Nike designers over nine months. The brief comes from the kid. The execution comes from people who build footwear for a living.
That is the inverse of how a collaboration normally runs here, where a brand picks a name with an audience and the design work flows outward from the brand’s own plan. Doernbecher flows inward, and it has no resale narrative pushing it and no celebrity attached. It also produces, year after year, the most detailed footwear Nike puts into the world, and this class is a reminder why. A tool nobody had a use for finally got one.
No retail price has been announced for the Doernbecher Freestyle 22 collection, which is normal for the program at this stage, and the first pairs changed hands at an auction rather than over a counter. The only figure with any authority attached to this hybrid is its own history, and the Wotherspoon pair retailed at $160 in 2018. For a sense of where Air Max sits now, this site has the Cow Print Air Max 95 at $200, the Chrome Big Bubble 95 at $190 and the Air Max 1 Kansas City Royals at $150. Doernbecher has never priced against that market, because the money leaves the company.
The Doernbecher Freestyle 22 collection was auctioned in Portland on October 16. Nike says the shoes launch in the United States on SNKRS and at select US retail locations this winter, with nothing narrower than the season given. No style code and no retail price have been published for Owen’s Air Max 1/97. The other five silhouettes in the class are the Nike Structure Plus, the Air Force 1 Mid, the ACG Rufus, the GT Future and the Air Jordan 11 Low IE.
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