The Dunk Low GORE-TEX Shares One Style Code With Every Colorway Before It

Nike has the Dunk Low GORE-TEX arriving October 20 in Camo Green, Black Spruce, Sequoia and Sonic Yellow, and the most interesting thing about it is printed on the box rather than the shoe. The style code is HQ2053-300. Every Dunk Low GORE-TEX Nike has shipped since 2025 has carried that same HQ2053 root with only the color suffix moving, which is not how Nike normally handles a seasonal special.

The Dunk arrived in 1985 as a basketball shoe built to put college teams in matching footwear, and it spent the back half of the 1990s being adopted by skaters who wanted a flat, cheap, durable leather shoe before Nike SB formalized that in 2002. None of that history involves weather. The GORE-TEX version is a recent idea, starting in 2025 with a tan pair under HQ2053-800 and running through a triple black, a Summit White, a Light Bone, a Light Crimson and an Oil Grey, which makes the Camo Green at least the seventh colorway sharing that root. Brands normally issue a new style code when a material changes, because the code is how the supply chain tells one build from another. Keeping every waterproof Dunk on one code says Nike treats the GORE-TEX Dunk as a standing line item with a color calendar, not as a seasonal exercise it might stop doing. It also means the GORE-TEX build is specified once and colored many times, which is the cheapest way to run a technical variant and the reason these keep appearing without a campaign behind any of them.

Camo Green is a colorway name and not a print. There is no camouflage anywhere on this shoe. What Nike means by it is a dark grey-green leather that reads almost black indoors, set against a deeper spruce on the overlays and a textile collar and tongue in a browner olive. The Swoosh is the exception, a glossy Sonic Yellow that looks closer to rubber than to leather and is the only thing on the shoe visible from across a room. A gold woven GORE-TEX label sits on the lateral sidewall above the midsole, and Nike’s own photography leans hard on it, shooting the panel under beaded water so the droplets stand on the surface rather than soaking in. The toe carries the usual Dunk perforations, the collar is padded, and the outsole keeps the pivot circle. Nike lists a reflective detail without saying where it is, and nothing in the product photography settles that. The laces and the eyestay sit in the same browner olive as the collar, which keeps the whole upper in one family and leaves the Swoosh carrying the entire colorway on its own.

This is the fourth waterproof shoe to come through here in a week, and the pattern is worth naming. Nike is not running a GORE-TEX capsule, it is running GORE-TEX as a construction option across unrelated franchises at the same time, and the Pegasus 42 and the Air Force 1 solve it differently, one building the membrane into the mesh and the other pairing it with a Vibram outsole. The Dunk gets the simplest treatment of the three, a membrane behind a leather upper and no other change. That is either the least ambitious version or the most honest one, depending on whether a buyer wants the Dunk to become a different shoe or wants it to stay a Dunk that survives a wet commute. The Dunk is also the only one of the three that was never a performance shoe in the first place, so there is no running or training claim for the membrane to interfere with, which may be exactly why it got the plainest execution.

The Dunk Low GORE-TEX is $155. The standard Dunk Low Retro Nike has dated to the same October 20, in Gold Suede and Pale Ivory, is $130, so waterproofing costs $25 on this model. That is the smallest GORE-TEX premium in Nike’s current run. The Pegasus 42 GORE-TEX is $165 against $145 for the standard Pegasus 42, a $20 step on a shoe that starts higher. The Air Force 1 GORE-TEX Vibram is $150 against $115 for an Air Force 1 ’07, a $35 step. For outside comparison, the Vans Old Skool GORE-TEX is $130. The Dunk sits in the middle of that spread and resale on previous HQ2053 colorways has stayed close to retail rather than climbing.

The Nike Dunk Low GORE-TEX in Camo Green, Black Spruce, Sequoia and Sonic Yellow releases October 20 under style code HQ2053-300 at $155 in men’s sizing. It will be available at Nike.com and at Foot Locker, with the usual GORE-TEX Dunk stockists expected to carry it. Nike has given no indication that the HQ2053 run is ending, and an Oil Grey pair on the same root has already been covered for this season.

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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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