Discover: Why the Nike Shox Was Always Ahead Of Its Time

At the turn of the Millenium, Nike previewed one of its most futuristic and controversial silhouettes to date. The original Nike Shox BB4 burst on the scene when the NBA’s Vince Carter made his legendary slam dunk ‘Le Dunk de la Mort’ over Frédéric Weis, and although the sneaker had already been selling well that year, the move catapulted it into iconic status. Packed with new technology, the BB4 Shox was both futuristic-looking and future-forward, but having spent 16 years in the making, what else should we have expected?

Do the maths and you’ll realise that the Shox history dates back to 1984, making the idea almost as old as the Air Force 1. Although the shoes couldn’t be further apart from each other, we have the same brain to thank for both silhouettes. As innovative as the AF1 was at the time, the Shox was where Bruce Kilgore really started to push the boundaries, opting to experiment with creating a mechanical cushioning system, instead of relying on Nike’s Air technology. While the Shox we know today has a very particular look, the original prototypes looked much more like the kind of suspension fork you’d see on a mountain bike, rendering the years between that and the launch critical for designing something that both worked, and was actually wearable.

If you’re at all familiar with performance footwear, you’ll have heard the term ‘energy return’. The Shox build actually offered the first energy return system in any shoe, with its springy columns paving the way for most modern runners, from Nike Alphaflys to adidas Ultra Boosts. The shoe design followed a space-age concept and somehow managed to look both futuristic and quintessentially noughties all at once. The team behind the Shox development studied astronauts' spacesuits for detailing, and somewhat unsurprisingly, the piston-style heel took cues from rocket boosters. During the process, the Swoosh brand experimented with steel springs in the sole, but found that they were unable to find the ideal balance between bounce and support, hence settling on the hollow foam pillar design we see today. In fact, it was actually Air Max 95 designer, Sergio Lozano, who played a key role in coming up with the hollowed-out design.

While the BB4 Shox’s sporting roots had a very particular audience, Nike recognised the demand in the tech and started to develop more Shox models. The style that seems to immediately spring to mind when you mention Shox is the Shox R4, an edgy silhouette that was originally pushed to gyms and bodybuilders (although it had questionable knee support) in 2000, but quickly gained traction within a couple of European subcultures, including football fans. In fact, UK-based fans of the Shox may not even be that aware of the style’s basketball history, as the silhouette has been so synonymous with the British underground grime scene for years.

Then, the Shox TL (or Total) touched down in 2003 and saw the column-based tech get taken up a notch, with 12 columns stretching their way from the heel to the forefoot. At the time, the grime scene was still young, and artists were relying on pirate radio and white label records to get their sounds heard. In a way, alongside key Air Max silhouettes like the AM97 and AM95, the bold, statement design of the Shox represented the genre perfectly, and its cultural significance started to grow as the UK grime scene gained traction. However, outside the scene and over the pond, the Shox novelty had worn off and pairs started to appear in discount stores, leading the style to become phased out sometime around 2009.

While the silhouette fell out of favour as more technical runners hit the mainstream, a couple of mini resurgences did push through. In 2014, the limited-edition Shox TLX Mid dropped at Nike Lab, and in 2017 footwear aficionado Sean Wotherspoon called it that the model would make a comeback. By 2018, only two styles had hit the shelves – the Shox Gravity and the Shox R4, although neither were a sell-out success.

However, it was just the start. The souped-up style was about to earn itself two major co-signs. The first: a runway debut at Paris Fashion Week thanks to COMME des GARCONS. Working on top of the TL silhouette, the pair saw both white and black versions come adorned with branded chain details that gave it an extra edge. Secondly, the Shox R4 was spotted on Drake, who fresh off his grime phase and dripping in Nike, posted a photo in a pair while on tour.

The model’s connection to the grime scene was cemented in 2019 as Skepta brought the Shox out from hiding for his SK Shox TL collaboration – stealthy black and red pair that captured the attention of many a sneakerhead. Speaking to Nike about why he picked the model, the artist said "When I used to go to Manchester and up North, I used to see all the kids rocking Shox, it was a real street shoe. I’d be like, ‘I see you lot’. I like the swag. So I had to do it."

Despite the co-signs, the Shox seemed to hit another lull shortly afterward, although given the events that occurred in 2020, so did the rest of the sneaker scene. Confined to our homes, outdoor footwear wasn’t necessarily on everyone’s minds, but when we did emerge it was comfortable styles like the New Balance 990 that took priority. Shortly after, it was vintage basketball silhouettes like New Balance 550s, Nike Dunks and Jordan 1s that topped everyone's must-have list – safe bets that were wearable and equally as suitable for the lifestyle wearer. Needless to say, the basketball-born Shox was still nowhere to be found – outside of Vince Carter’s 2018/19 season at least.

Fast-forward to 2022 though, and it seemed (for a moment) that the world was finally ready. Spotted peeking out from underneath a pair of tracksuit bottoms, the Shox Ride 2 was the subject of a Supreme x Nike collab, with the ballsy skate brand’s branding wrapped around the columns. Although the pairs managed to sell out unlike the duo’s Zoom Flight 95s which actually sat in the London Dover Street Market boutique, it didn’t quite trigger the full-scale Shox resurgence we’d been waiting for. Instead, along came Martine Rose, with an even more controversial take on the shoe in tow.

The British designer’s second Nike footwear collab, Rose opted for a reimagined take on the model. Speaking to Vogue, she said, “I knew that I wanted to use the Shox profile, which in the UK has a particular sort of resonance in that it’s always been an underground shoe that everyone has worn.” Recognising the impact that the silhouette had on both the grime scene and football, Rose interpreted the pair with her own brand’s disruptive flair, hacking off the ankle support and literally elevating the columns to create a heeled mule, describing the result as a “beautiful shape” - and thus, under the guise of the beautiful game, directly continuing her previous Nike football kit collab and celebration of female football, and its own overlooked, underground community.

Martine Rose’s efforts certainly upped the silhouette’s shox value (get it?) but right now, we’re still yet to see if the model will return to the mainstream. 2022’s events seem reminiscent of the Drake and COMME co-signs of 2018, and, whilst we know that the footwear industry’s technical capabilities are now leaps and bounds ahead, we’d still argue that with each re-introduction, the futuristic-looking Shox family remains a little ahead of its time.

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