Design Review: Nike Air Max Lebron VII ‘Red Carpet’

I love sneakers. However, aside from a burgeoning appreciation for certain Air Jordans–just IIIs, IVs and Vs, thanks–I devote little time to collecting basketball shoes, retro or contemporary.  My sneaker closet shamelessly reveals my devoted patronage to Nike’s ACG, Air Max and Sportswear lines, and I will readily cop to being blissfully ignorant in my erstwhile eschewage of the brand’s basketball-specific footwear.

That all changed this August when I got a sneak peek at the upcoming Air Max LeBron VII posted as part of Freshness’ ongoing coverage of the latest ‘Bron releases.

Nike Air Max Lebron James VII "Red Carpet" colorway

Hold the phone–now there’s a basketball shoe I can really sink my feet into.

Designed by sneakerhead-cum-footwear-designer Jason Petrie, LeBron’s latest signature shoe features a few new technological innovations that really inform the gestalt of the sneaker. (Petrie waxes specific on these technical novelties and the lifestyle cues used as inspiration for his shoe in a video from KixandtheCity, on site at the LeBron VII launch and media summit.) In brief, the LeBron VII boasts a redesigned and basketball-specific 360º Air Max unit (now with 80% more air!) visible inside the length of the midsole, in addition to the incorporation Nike’s Flywire composite material in the upper for tensile yet lightweight support on most models.

LeBron puts his design priorities plainly in the above Nike-produced video, stating that “the first thing is, I want it to look good.” Not playing basketball myself, I can’t agree more. Recently, SneakerNews published some detailed shots of the much-hyped Red Carpet colorway (drawing its material inspirations from LeBron’s “red carpet” lifestyle), and after a closer look, I can imagine LeBron was mighty satisfied with the final manifestation of this, his seventh signature shoe:

The simplistic silhouette and organic curves of the form provide a soothing visual counterpart to the anxious, futuristic technology of materials on display. In profile, the sneaker’s surface area is broken up into several horizontal passages of texture and color that gently transition visually and anatomically from weightless, translucent midsole, to heel and toe swathed in pebble grain leather, up through the body of the sneaker executed in a woven textile (that’s tactily and aesthetically superior to the mutant skin of Flywire), and finally at the top, a Mowabb-inspired soft ankle cuff.

Design Predecessor: Air Max 97

Part of the appeal of the LeBron VII is the full-length Air Max unit.  It’s what perpetually draws me back to Air Max 97s no matter how badly Nike designers may disgrace their iconic form with garish colorways and materials,

Design Predecessor: Air Terra 90

it’s the design feature that most attracted me to the Air Max Terra Humara (even when nobody else felt ‘em and they were on clearance shelves),

Design Predecessor: Air Total Max Uptempo

and it’s what lured me to almost cop a pair of Air Total Max Uptempos a few months back.

In this model, the Air Unit is seamless, flush with the midsole, smooth and streamlined.  Its full-length visibility, unfettered by incursions of the foam surround, flatters and flaunts the shoe’s singular profile. A squishy bubble of air sitting sensuously beneath the simplistically designed but technically advanced basketball upper feels like a natural and harmonious hybridization of Nike’s design innovations, both aesthetic and athletic. In fact, it’s such an effortless marriage of forms, I almost wonder what took them so long.

I’ve chosen to focus on the so-called ‘Red Carpet’ colorway since after this summer, when turquoise proved to be the official hue of the season, I’m just such a sucker for any and all applications of Nike’s ‘Fresh Water’ treatment. Thus far, none of the 6 or so colorways that have been previewed have held my attention…well, except maybe the black/neon green variation pictured on the right (again with the Air Total Max Uptempo reference.)

Another distinction held by the Red Carpet release is its NFW (that’s No Flywire) construction that instead employs a Woven-esque material on the body of the sneaker and an embroidered swoosh outline.  This subtle touch, both tactile and visual, helps humanize the shoe’s futuristic composition by adding this whimsical, “archaic” quirk.

I feel the Red Carpet colorway could definitely have benefitted from a little patent leather love, a luxury not spared on the other versions shown above. Pebble grain leather feels so matte and dull on this otherwise forward-looking design, and patent might have been better suited for this secular, street-oriented NFW colorway.

Overscaled LeBron logo = too much

Both Petrie and James cite the shoe’s detailing as one of its design strengths.  Naturally, a signature shoe should feature some LeBron branding, but both designer and namesake went a little overboard with the application, demonstrated in the gaudy, overscaled LeBron logo on the medial heel.

Ok, ok, we get it.

Another minor design misstep was the “Twenty Three” text detailing on the already clumsy toe bumper.  Not only is the piquant red text jarring against all that serene blue (although I suppose there needed to be some red in the “Red Carpet” colorway), but hasn’t Michael Jordan culturally secured lifetime exclusive rights to emblazoning the numerals 23 on a basketball shoe?

Tongue section

Smaller LeBron logo and incised script detailing.

Generally, the detailing concentrated on the tongue, and rear portion of the sneaker is successful.  Small swatches of black patent leather in both sections provide a teasing touch of luxury,  while the perforated mesh tongue creates a material link to the woven textile body. The smaller LeBron logos on the external heel tastefully convey the identity of the shoe’s patron, as do the subtle, incised “L” and “J” on the white foam of the left and right heel, respectively.

My last gripe with Petrie’s design of the new LeBron VII concerns the sole of the sneaker.  The quadrisected planes of turquoise and black radiating from a central LeBron-branded medallion disrupt the established horizontality of the rest of the sneaker.  Petrie may have done better to leave it uniformly black and abandon the sort of spiderweb motif suggested by the concentric circles and radiating diagonals. (Not pictured are the even worse variations on sole treatment I saw on other colorways of this model.)

Sole

To make it clear, I’m solidly impressed with the beautiful industrial design of this sneaker.  I think Petrie, James and Nike have managed to craft a basketball shoe with a broad aesthetic appeal that caught the eye of even staunch running/lifestyle sneaker devotees like myself.   In my estimation, the real success lies in the execution of the artfully-designed sneaker that surpasses its specialized function/market appeal to unite different camps of sneaker consumers and enthusiasts under the universal recognition of good design.

Select colorways of the Nike Air Max Lebron VII are scheduled for release today, Saturday, October 24th, however there is some confusion about the availability and release date of the Red Carpet edition concerned in this review.