Nike’s Air Force 1 Sunflower Hides a Second Shoe Under a Removable Shroud

The Air Force 1 ’07 LX “Sunflower” is two shoes. Unlace it, lift the printed shroud off, and what is underneath is a clean Sesame canvas Air Force 1 with hemp leather accents and a gum sole. Leave the shroud on and the shoe is a floral object with cut petals standing off the upper. Nike put it out over the summer without ever publishing a release date, and it is in stock at US retailers right now.

Nike released the Air Force 1 in late October 1982 as the first Nike basketball shoe with Air cushioning, designed by Bruce Kilgore. Nike’s claim at the time was that the Air Sole unit cushioned shock 30 percent better and was 20 percent more resilient than a standard shoe. The part most people miss is where the shape came from. Kilgore borrowed from Nike’s Approach hiking boot, which used a lowered heel to cut pressure on the Achilles tendon, and applied that idea to basketball. The most-produced sneaker silhouette in the world started as a hiking principle.

The lifestyle turn is datable too. Beginning in late 1985, Nike ran a Shoe of the Month program placing limited colorways with select retailers, which Nike credits in its own history with adding street credibility to the shoes and the brand. That program, rather than any single city’s origin story, is the version Nike puts its own name behind.

Worth noting what Nike does not say. The story that circulates about the Air Force 1, that Nike discontinued it around 1984 and a group of Baltimore retailers brought it back, appears nowhere in Nike’s own history of the shoe, and no primary source for it turned up in checking this post. It may well be true. It is not something Nike has put on the record, and this post will not state it as though it had.

The Sunflower is an ’07 LX, Nike’s designation for lower-volume, materially upgraded Air Force 1 makeups, and the LX part is doing real work here. The base is a woven Sesame textile upper with a perforated toe box, hemp leather accents, white Swooshes, a tan leather heel tab and a gum rubber outsole with the pivot circles. Over that goes a removable shroud printed with layered sunflower graphics and cut with dimensional floral openings, laser cut according to Lapstone and Hammer’s product copy, so the petals lift away from the upper instead of lying flat against it.

Under the print the platform is unchanged, Nike Air cushioning in a foam midsole over the gum outsole, so the shoe reverts to a standard Air Force 1 ride the moment the shroud comes off. The added construction is entirely in the layer you can remove, which is the argument for buying it over a printed pair.

The shroud fastens through the lacing, which means the shoe converts in about a minute. That is the actual feature. Most floral Air Force 1s are a print you are stuck with. This is a print you can take off, and the shoe underneath is good enough to wear on its own, which is not true of every shrouded release.

Nike has run this device before without naming it. Sneaker Bar Detroit and JustFreshKicks both place a Cherry Blossom version ahead of the Sunflower and a leaf-themed version ahead of that, though the two outlets call the leaf pair different things and no source names the series. Nike has not marketed it as a pack, which is worth noticing. A named seasonal pack would sell better and index better. Releasing them as unlabeled one-offs keeps each pair from reading as scheduled product.

The Sunflower never got a Nike.com US doorway at all. Nike’s own site search returns no result for it. It went out through Extra Butter, Lapstone and Hammer and moda3 instead, with Lapstone flagging it as a limited release capped at one pair per person. For a shoe carrying this much construction, that is a quiet exit.

Retail is $125, matched across all three retailer product pages. A standard Air Force 1 ’07 on nike.com is $115 today. Ten dollars is what Nike is charging for a woven textile upper, hemp leather, a leather heel tab and an entire second removable layer, which is a small premium for that much added construction. House of Heat listed the shoe at $95, a figure the three retailer pages contradict, so treat that one as wrong.

No source published a release date for the Air Force 1 ’07 LX “Sunflower,” and the two that estimated one disagreed. JustFreshKicks said Summer 2026 on June 17. Sneaker Bar Detroit revised it to Fall 2026 on June 29, twelve days later. This post previously said the shoe was releasing this summer, which was already stale when it published. It is out. Style code IW1256-299, colorway Sesame/White-Hemp-Natural, $125, in stock at Extra Butter, Lapstone and Hammer and moda3. Nike.com does not list it.

Source: Justfreshkicks

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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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