How the latest incarnation of the Nike Air Max (30 years old today) has its feet firmly planted in the future.

Despite its continued relevance in fashion and street style, with an audience that spans generations and genders, Nike’s Air Max is — by footwear standards — an elderly innovation. The franchise’s original installment hits the grand age of 30 today. As you’d expect, Nike is intent on giving it a birthday bash to remember, all the way down to a new, painstaking restoration of the Air Max 1’s classic shape and a new iteration of its signature technology (in which the sole of of each sneaker is embedded with a visible, air-filled pocket) in the form of the Air VaporMax, which launches on MR PORTER today.

The road to the VaporMax is a long one. Since the Air Max launched in 1987, it’s been updated almost every year. An audience weaned on the statement look and bonus bounce of those oversized heel windows expected more and more with each successive design. The bubbles got bigger and the cutaways became more ostentatious. In 1993, blow moulding allowed for a perilously swollen 270-degree air bag at the heel, while 1995 added the first window to the forefoot. By the time it came to The Air Max 97 (currently one of the most coveted retro models on the market as it celebrates its 20th anniversary) the air pocket was running (and visible) along the whole sole.

Then, despite the digitally assisted ascent of a nascent sneaker collector culture, things faltered.

Given environmental concerns regarding greenhouse gases, Nike decided to try and eliminate sulphur hexafluoride (abbreviated to a more manageable SF6) from its air units. That directive was issued in 1992, but it took more than a decade to create a new manufacturing process that could utilize a greener gas without the air pockets leaking. This mission delayed post-millennial innovation, resulting in repeats of existing technologies or short-lived experiments, such as a tubular take on the visible air window. 2006’s Air Max 360 — which encased nitrogen in a thermoformed unit — was the eventual answer.

From that point onwards, the 360 unit underwent several upgrades, but 2017’s breakthrough, the Air VaporMax, is the most significant reboot of Air Max to date. It’s a new Air sneaker that has been designed from scratch rather than attempting to repeat or improve on past models. Air VaporMax technology finally fulfills one of Nike’s longtime quests – to eliminate the protective layers of foam that are traditionally visible through the Air Max window, and let wearers walk on air unhindered.

In fact, a brand-new, totally holistic approach to air unit design and manufacture that has been close to seven years in the making lets a flexible unit (made in facilities near to the fabled Oregon-based Nike Campus) act as both the outsole, the cushioning and the midsole. Partnered with the featherweight properties of 2012’s form-fitting Flyknit technology for the upper, those multiple processes of elimination mean that the VaporMax barely weighs a thing.

In recent years, while annual Air Max editions have been billed as athletic shoes, more discreet cushioning systems have superseded it as a serious performance proposition. It’s here that the VaporMax is pitched as a new start that puts it back in the running, so to speak. Capitalising on the statement look of that natural motion bubble system, the trend audience aren’t being ignored either — tellingly, the first incarnation of the VaporMax to go on sale was a slip-on Comme des Garçons collaboration. When this technology gets its wider lace-up release this weekend, it’s a commemorative step into the future — the antithesis of all things retro, but part of a family with a significant pedigree.

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