Nike Wrote Suede on the First Two SB Air Force 1s and Nubuck on This One

Nike SB opens entries for a Navy and Black Air Force 1 on November 13, the third colorway to run on style code HM8517 this year. The first two landed in April and August, and Nike described the upper on both of them as suede. This one Nike calls nubuck. That is one word changed on a product page, and across three builds that are otherwise identical down to the tread pattern, it is the only thing Nike has actually told anybody is different.

The Air Force 1 arrived in 1982 as a Bruce Kilgore basketball shoe and the first Nike basketball model built around an Air Sole unit, which is still the line Nike prints in the heritage block on these product pages. It was a performance product, it went out of production on schedule, and it came back because retailers kept ordering it long after Nike had moved on. Four decades later it is the shoe Nike sells more of than any other, and almost none of that volume has anything to do with basketball. The Air Force 1 is the safest shape Nike owns, which is why every corner of the company eventually gets a turn with it.

The Nike SB version is a rebuild rather than a logo swap. The collar is padded out for ankle protection, the upper moves to a napped leather so the foot can flex, the sidewalls are smoothed off where a skater’s foot drags across them, and the outsole keeps the circular tread with the forefoot pivot circle. Where it sits in the Nike SB line is the more interesting question. The Dunk is the brand’s shoe and has been since Nike SB started. The Air Force 1 is the one Nike SB keeps bringing back and the one that has never quite taken, which is why it usually arrives attached to somebody, whether that is Yuto Horigome or a Philadelphia skate shop.

This pair is tonal almost to the point of vanishing. Navy covers the whole upper, the collar and the tongue, the Swoosh is embroidered in black instead of set in a contrast color, and everything below the foxing is black as well: sidewall, midsole, outsole. The AIR molded into the midsole is blacked out against black and only reads at an angle. A second set of black rope laces ships in the box, the kind of detail that only turns up if somebody opens the press kit. The only visual relief anywhere on it is a small woven label low on the lateral forefoot.

The press frames show a short, even nap running across the quarter panel and over the toe. Nike’s spec sheet for this colorway says nubuck. Its spec sheets for the April and August pairs said suede, and those are two different materials taken from two different parts of the same hide, with nubuck sanded from the outer surface and suede split from the inner one. Most of the release feeds have gone with suede. Nike’s own page is the better source, so nubuck is what this post carries, with the disagreement on the record.

Three colorways in eight months on one style code, no collaborator on any of them and no story beyond a color. Read one way that is Nike SB using the Air Force 1 as filler. Read the other way, which is the more useful way, it is the first evidence in a while that the shoe sits in the line on its own, rather than being wheeled out whenever a partner wants something other than a Dunk. A silhouette that only exists as a collaboration is not a franchise, it is a favor, and the Air Force 1 has spent most of its Nike SB life in exactly that position. Nike runs the same play on the sportswear side, most visibly when the What The LA returned on the code it wore in 2019.

How little thought goes into the packaging of these shows up on the product pages themselves. The heritage block on the April pair, still live on Nike’s site, is about the Air Max and the arrival of visible Air in 1987, pasted onto an Air Force 1 listing. Nike is assembling these pages out of parts, and the shoe underneath is better than the page selling it.

Retail is $120, which is what the April and August pairs cost and what the Nocturnal collaboration cost in October. The Air Force 1 ’07 LV8 that comes back as the What The LA this month is listed at $125, so the Nike SB build lands five dollars under the sportswear model while adding the padded collar and the napped upper. Distribution is the part worth watching. All three HM8517 colorways have gone out through SNKRS entries rather than straight onto shelves, which is heavier machinery than a general-release skate shoe in an open color normally gets.

The Nike SB Air Force 1 in Navy and Black, style code HM8517-400, opens SNKRS entries on November 13 at $120 in a full size run. Expect it at SNKRS, on Nike.com, and through Nike SB stockists and the skate shops that carry the line.

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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