Exclusive: Nike, KAWS, and Sky High Farm Workwear Cooked Up an Epic New Air Force 1

Photographs: Nike; Collage: Gabe Conte

How do you make a red-hot sneaker collab between two of the world’s biggest artists—the legendary KAWS and Dan Colen of the infamous IRAK crew—even better? You use the drop to raise money for a seriously worthy cause.

Dover Street Market is celebrating its tenth anniversary in New York City on December 16, and to honor that milestone, the iconic retailer is unveiling a brand-new collaboration between Sky High Farm Workwear and Nike. The 10-piece capsule collection is an innovative reimagining of existing Nike favorites—including a chore coat, a hoodie, a beanie, and two Air Force 1 colorways—all done up in KAWS’s signature style.

While the capsule is sure to be highly coveted by KAWS collectors and New York streetwear enthusiasts, there’s much more to the collaboration than hype. Sky High Farm Workwear has been built under the umbrella of Sky High Farm Universe, a brand co-founded by Colen and Daphne Seybold to support the nonprofit, which provides underprivileged communities with food security and works to create pathways to food sovereignty since its founding in 2012. Like all of Sky High Farm Universe’s collabs with high-profile artists and retailers, a portion of profits generated by this collection will be pumped back into the nonprofit so that they can continue to provide high-quality, nutrient-rich food to those who really need it.

One of the things that Colen has learned leading Sky High Farm over the last decade is “how problematic and complicated philanthropy is,” he told GQ. “It’s a very exclusive world, almost an ivory tower in and of itself, even though it proposes to be a device to help those who need it the most,” he said. “It really is structured to benefit the donor class, the wealthy people—people who have the time and the contacts to apply for grants.” Part of the challenge with Sky High, Colen explained, has been “trying to think about how philanthropy has traditionally been done and proposing new models.”

That’s led Colen to his high-profile collaborations and drops like this one with Nike and KAWS, the artist Brian Donnelly. KAWS, Colen said, “understood what we were trying to do,” and has been a supporter of the project “since day one.” Their work together on this collection is inspired in part by what Colen sees as the amazing impact that Donnelly’s work has had worldwide. “Brian has been a trailblazer in terms of what an intersectional practice looks like for an artist and how far into popular culture one can go,” Colen said. “We really want our ideas to resonate at the level that his already have.”

KAWS agrees. “My wife and I just love what Dan does,” Donnelly said. “We met him before he started the farm, and once we started to realize what he was actually doing, it’s pretty incredible.” His familiarity with the project and its philanthropic scope made the decision to bring this collab to life easy. “When he asked me to do this, it was a no-brainer,” Donnelly said. “It was perfect. Like, of course I would want to do this.”

At the heart of this collection is the reimagined Air Force 1—available in both white and black—which has been given the full KAWS treatment. The iconic silhouette has a “printed, dye-cut Swoosh applique” laid over the original logo, Donnelly said, which he designed to channel some of the cloud-based imagery that Sky High had used in its work previously. “I wanted to create something that existed within that family, but sort of make it my own,” Donnelly said. “I liked the idea of taking these pre-existing things and reworking them.” Colen said that reusing existing Nike shoes and clothing for this project was very much in line with the ethos of the organization. “We’re trying to acknowledge that the world is already full of creative design.”

Food security and food justice have become hot-button issues in the wake of the pandemic, as the problems inherent with some of the systems have been laid bare. Colen said that this new level of awareness of what’s really been a long-standing concern has made the work of the farm resonate with people more easily, and that when people understand the Sky High mission, it resonates. For Donnelly, this particular project—which launches in-store at DSMNY and online at Sky High Farm Universe on December 16—is exciting precisely because of the benefit it might have for this kind of work. “It’s really exciting to me,” he said. “Hopefully, it’ll make an impact with the farm and help get them more income.”

Originally Appeared on GQ

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