Juliana Huxtable Had the Standout Look at Nike’s Pre-NYFW Party
Nike recently tasked 14 female designers with reimagining two classic sneakers, the Air Force 1 and the Air Jordan 1. The resulting 10-shoe collection, titled the 1 Re-Imagined, is grouped into five different categories—Explorer, Lover, Sage, Rebel, and Jester—and the brand tapped musicians Abra and Kelsey Lu to star in the collection’s campaign imagery. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that they threw a raucous party last night to celebrate the capsule with performances from Kehlani, Kelela, and Juliana Huxtable—a proper kickoff to New York Fashion Week.
Kelela’s formfitting black-and-white frock and Kehlani’s creamy trenchcoat dress both elevated their casual sneakers, but artist and DJ Juliana Huxtable took a different approach: She built her playful outfit, composed of ruffled Vaquera pantaloons and a simple sports bra, around the white pair of AF1 Explorers that she wore. Huxtable doesn’t usually wear sneakers, let alone white shoes that are impossible to keep clean in the city, so she had to stop by the dollar store to pick up a fresh pair of white socks to match the shoes. “I knew I wanted to wear white socks because I just felt like that would look really cute, and it would make my skin look less wintry, because of the contrast,” she explains. “It’s very rare that I wear sneakers, so when I do, I like to be really playful, so I wanted the outfit to feel kind of seventh-grade, but adult and Fashion Week–appropriate.”
The party featured a stage adorned with flowers and models in massive basketball-jersey gowns standing on mounds of grass, but for all the theatrics, it was still a family affair for Huxtable—the Nike party marked yet another collaborative effort with Kelela. “It’s always really cute because I know that the sounds aren’t incompatible and because there’s a familiarity,” she says. “It’s sort of nice that I can think about it like setting the mood for her set.” And while Huxtable’s diverse DJ set certainly did set the mood well, her selections (and look) truly stand on their own.
