Side note regarding the drop of the Gold Toes: when a customer pulled up to CoolKicksLA and traded the sneaker consignment store a pair featuring a factory defect in the form of an upside down swoosh. Three months later, during the 2018 NBA All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles, the brand gave the people what they wanted: a wider release of the very similar “Gold Toe” AJ1, designed with metallic gold, black and white accents and a glorious patent leather upper. “Gold Toe” Air Jordan 1Īt ComplexCon in November 2017, streetwear/sneaker boutique Union Los Angeles collaborated with the Jordan Brand to debut the limited edition and supercrispy “Gold Toe Top 3” Air Jordan 1s. No matter how you wear them, the Game Royals are a definite sleeper on 2018’s long list. So f0lks got creative, and started customizing their Royals into Fragments. The only real difference between the two? The Fragments feature a black toe cap and eyestay, while on the Game Royals it’s blue. This shoe truly feels like a “little brother” to the iconic “Fragment” Air Jordan 1s - a grail for many sneakerheads, though the resale value of the shoe, which released in 2014, has skyrocketed to more than $2,000. From the colors, to the materials and, most importantly, the storytelling, these are the best AJ1s the year had to offer.įollowing the road map of the classic “Chicago” AJ1, the Jordan Brand swapped out red for a beautiful shade of blue and delivered the “Game Royal” colorway. We narrowed the list down t0 15 looks, and ranked them in descending order. But none of them made The Undefeated’s list of 2018’s top Air Jordan 1s. And in early December, police had to shut down the exclusive release of the “Art Basel” AJ1s at Miami sneaker boutique SoleFly due to safety concerns.Īll of the above-mentioned pairs are dope and were highly sought-after. The “PSG” AJ1, designed using neoprene on the silhouette for the first time, celebrated Jordan’s first line of products with a soccer club, France’s Paris Saint-Germain. The acronym “AWOK,” which stands for “Anna Wintour OK,” took on new meaning in the sneaker community after Wintour, the Conde Nast artistic director/ Vogue editor-in-chief, collaborated with Jordan to design two pairs of women’s zip-up AJ1s in white and red colorways. Through the “Best Hand in the Game” collection, the Jordan Brand experimented with new palettes, crafting AJ1s in “Track Red,” “Yellow Ochre,” “Clay Green,” and “Blue Moon” colorways. The Pass the Torches, by the way, are now being sold for more than $2,000.

Pairs of the special edition, and very limited “Pass the Torch” 1s were unveiled as part of Nike’s Art of a Champion collection to honor Kawhi Leonard (who left Jordan for New Balance in November) being named the 2014 NBA Finals MVP. Later that month, 2,300 individually numbered pairs of the “Homage to Home” 1s - a split combination of the iconic “Banned” and “Chicago” colorways on one shoe - dropped exclusively in Chicago. In April, the “Shadow” 1s returned for the first time in five years.

In January, 13 different models of AJ1s dropped - and it didn’t stop there. We’ve should’ve known them boys at Jumpman were up to something, based upon the early calendar of releases. In comparison, the second-most released Air Jordan of 2018 was the AJ3, with 18 pairs. Exactly 60 signature pairs of the famed silhouette dropped this year. As a warmup to the anniversary, the Jordan Brand essentially made 2018 the year of the AJ1. First seen on the basketball court in 1984, the shoe was officially released in 1985. When the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, marking the arrival of 2019, it’ll be exactly 35 years since Nike and Michael Jordan debuted his first signature sneaker, the Air Jordan 1.

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