Comme des Garçons Is Remixing One of Nike’s More Undersung Air Max Sneakers

While the Nike Air Max 95 is enjoying the spotlight for the shoe’s 30th anniversary, Comme des Garçons has decided to work on the sneaker’s lesser-sung successor.

The Comme des Garçons Homme Plus x Nike Sense 96 is a riff on the Air Max 96 featuring a completely new sole unit. No Air units are in sight, as the much chunkier midsole hosts a patchwork pattern of rippling like you might find in a zen garden. The full-name of the CdG sublabel is debossed into the medial midfoot shank, and the outsole is mapped with a harder rubber at select spots.

Up top, the Sense 96 retains the familiar outlines of the Air Max 96, albeit with a leather-on-leather construction getting rid of the mesh typically used inside the fang-shaped cutouts. All-white and all-black colorways are quintessential CdG and see their opposite colors used for the branding. The third and final variant of the lot opts for more color with a primarily pink upper.

Comme des Garçons first showed its Sense 96 during its Paris Fashion Week show last summer.

Without CdG’s intervention, the Air Max 96 features a sole unit nearly identical to the Air Max 95 but with an anatomically design dual-pressure heel. Not only has it been overshadowed by the two iconic sneakers that bookend it, the Air Max 95 and Air Max 97, but it’s also obscured by its own more direct sequel in the Air Max 96 2, which actually came out in 1997. All three of the Air Max 95, Air Max 96 and Air Max 96 2 were designed by Sergio Lozano, while Christian Tresser took over for the Air Max 97.

The Comme des Garçons Homme Plus x Nike Air Sense 96 will release Thursday, April 10, exclusively through CDG and Dover Street Market’s stores, as well as DSM’s website. Pricing is set at $240.