As close as it gets.

August 2, 2021

Jason aka “@mrcook23” reached out to me on Instagram, asking about turning his beat metallic blue ‘85s into the metallic orange pair which would complete his high top original Air Jordan 1 set. He wanted me to retain the character and aging of the uppers while replacing the blue parts with orange. I preserved every part of the original leather upper besides one heel tab that broke during deconstruction. The leather was deep cleaned and all canvas and polyester liners were replaced with new ones. The metallic orange parts were painted on leather and the cracking and flaking was done with an X-Acto blade. Upon rebuilding the shoes I encountered many challenges as the leather had been misshaped by all the wear over the years and each panel had to be bent and manipulated to fit where it once was. The seams were all resewn going through the same stitch holes. The lasting allowance for the sneaker was so fragile that I had to glue a thin piece of vegetable tanned leather to the ends in order for it to have enough leather to be re-lasted. The original wings logo was scanned and made into a screen print to retain an exact 1:1 copy which was reprinted in orange on the collars.