The What The LA Air Force 1 Returns on the Style Code It Wore in 2019

SNKRS opens entry October 22 for a pair of Air Force 1s that do not match each other. One shoe is navy and white with a purple lining, the other is red and purple over hairy tan suede, and both carry Los Angeles in white script above the midsole. Nike‘s own listing calls it the Air Force 1 ’07 LV8 LA. The style code printed on the box, CT1117-100, is the same one this shoe carried when it first released in 2019.

The Air Force 1 arrived in 1982 and Nike still describes it in the same terms, a basketball shoe with an encapsulated Air unit that outlived the job it was built for. The What The format is younger and it came from somewhere else entirely. Nike SB made the first one in 2007 out of panels lifted from dozens of earlier Dunk colorways, and the joke only worked because skaters could name every piece on the shoe. Everything badged What The since has inherited that premise, a shoe that pays off recognition. The LA version broke the rule in 2019. Instead of mining Nike’s own back catalogue it pulled from the city, mismatching colors and materials tied to Los Angeles teams, and it asked the wearer to recognize a sports town rather than a sneaker archive. A city has no canonical panel set, so the designer has to invent the references and hope they read. That is a harder trick to land, and it is part of why this one stayed in the conversation while plenty of late 2010s city makeups did not.

The two shoes share a build and almost nothing else. The left runs a navy mudguard under white leather with black laces, a purple collar lining and a black Nike Air tongue tag with a blue Swoosh. The right runs a red mudguard with a hairy tan suede panel across the midfoot, a purple quarter panel, a teal collar lining, a volt pull tab and white laces, under a Swoosh that fades from orange into pink inside a printed outline. A second Swoosh in gold sits small on the red toe panel. The heels do not match either, one purple with an orange block, one orange with a pink stripe, and both carry Los Angeles in the same white script. The midsoles are speckled, volt flecks on one and red on the other, with AIR set into the foxing stripe. One outsole is translucent and one is purple. The insoles are printed with Los and Angeles in cursive, split across the pair, which is the detail that makes the mismatch read as deliberate rather than accidental. Even the lace dubraes are split, gold on one foot and silver on the other, and that only registers if somebody is looking at both shoes at once. Which is the entire premise of the format.

Nike is reissuing a 2019 shoe under its original style code, and that is worth noticing on its own. A retro of a seven year old general release normally gets a fresh code and often a fresh name. This one gets neither. What it does get is a product page built on the sports equinox, the day when games from several major leagues land on the same date, which Nike’s copy offers without claiming the shoe was designed around it. The nod reads like a search hook more than a story. The more interesting read is about supply. This site has covered a dozen Air Force 1 colorways since the start of September, most of them general releases pushed out at volume, and putting a mismatched pair behind a SNKRS entry is Nike treating one of them as an event again. Whether that lands depends on how many people remember the first run. The 2019 release came out before the current wave of Air Force 1 fatigue set in, which may be exactly the point.

Retail is $125, which puts it under the Air Force 1s this site has covered most recently. The QS in pony hair, the Halloween pair and the ’01 in black and gym red all landed at $140, and every one of those is a single color story on standard materials. This pair carries two different uppers, hairy suede, a printed gradient Swoosh, two speckle treatments and two outsoles, and it still costs less than they do. Mismatched pairs are more expensive to cut and assemble, not cheaper, so the number says Nike wants volume here whatever the SNKRS entry suggests.

The Nike Air Force 1 ’07 LV8 What The LA releases October 22, with SNKRS entry opening at 7am Pacific, at Nike.com and select retailers. The style code is CT1117-100 and retail is $125. Nike has it listed in men’s sizing with a limit of one pair per account on the entry.

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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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