Patta’s ‘Chlorophyll’ Air Max 1 Is Back for the First Time Ever

When tents and chairs started dotting the sidewalk along Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal street in Amsterdam on a random weekday in September 2009, the locals didn’t know what to make of it. The weather was nice enough for camping, with the heat of the recently expired summer still lingering, but this wasn’t the place for it. They couldn’t parse it and they certainly couldn’t ignore it as rowdy young men coalesced in the street outside the sneaker store Patta.

“It was wild and craziness in front of the store,” says Guillaume “Gee” Schmidt, who founded Patta alongside Edson Sabajo, “people camping and that shit.”

The source of the commotion was a pair of Nike Air Max 1s dressed in leafy chlorophyll color and panels of denim material, designed by Patta in collaboration with Nike. Their release, scheduled for Sept. 29, drew an eager crowd that formed days ahead of the drop.

Before sneaker lineups went mass and collectible footwear became a part of pop culture, the concept of waiting outside for days on end for a pair of shoes, taking breaks only to steal a few hours of sleep in your car or make a quick food run, didn’t make much sense in the Netherlands. Patta introduced the concept, first through an Asics Gel Lyte 3 launch in 2007 and later via its Air Max 1s.

“I don’t think there was a lot of precedent for that,” Schmidt says. “Nobody really understood what it was. There were no actual rules for it in that sense.”

Patta and Nike are re-releasing the “Chlorophyll” Air Max 1 for the first time ever on Sept. 13 for €160. The shoe will be available exclusively through Patta via its physical stores and online here. (The Patta store in Lagos, Nigeria will have an early-access sale on Sept. 12.) The shoe’s return is timed to the 15th anniversary of the original and the 20th anniversary of Patta, which opened in Amsterdam in 2004.

The sneaker, along with early collabs with Asics, made Patta a legit streetwear brand and a destination for sneaker hunters around the world. And it established the Dutch store as one of Nike’s most reliable partners. Patta’s put its spin on numerous Nikes since, getting busy on the Air Jordan 7s in 2019 and a set of wavy Air Max 1s (co-signed by Amsterdam’s mayor) starting in 2021.

Patta cofounders Edson Sabajo (left) and Guillaume ‘Gee’ Schmidt. Via Patta

The green “Chlorophyll” Air Max 1 from 2009 was part of a five pack of pairs that marked Patta’s first official collaboration with Nike. Before that, Patta was involved in Nike work from the sidelines; Dutch artist and Patta associate Piet Parra worked on Amsterdam-themed Air Max 1 designs, and Patta helped out with the “Homegrown” Air Max 90 by State Magazine.

“We were already talking with Nike,” Schmidt says. “We had some really close relationships there.”

One of those relationships was with Jesse Leyva, who was then Nike’s czar of hype sneakers. Schmidt remembers meeting with Leyva on a houseboat in Amsterdam that Leyva was renting circa 2008 while visiting Nike’s nearby European headquarters in Hilversum. From those conversations, the Patta x Nike Air Max 1s were born.

Schmidt kicked around options and directions for the shoes with Masta Lee, another Patta team member. Lee reminisced on the shoes’ origins in an Instagram post this July, writing in a caption that he’d designed them “on pirated software (allegedly) only half knowing what I was doing.”

Masta Lee’s original renderings for the Patta x Nike Air Max 1s from 2009. Via Lee on Instagram

The green colorway didn’t come with any deep meaning or message, aside from being associated with Patta from the brand’s beginning.

“The original logo has green in it,” Schmidt says. “The original Patta T-shirt is a black T-shirt with a green script logo.”

Out of the original Patta x Nike Air Max 1s, the “Chlorophyll” was the most widely available, according to Schmidt. Other stores stocked the shoes, unlike the purple and black colorways, which were exclusive to Patta. (The corduroy “Dark Obsidian” pair also popped up at other stockists as a quickstrike.)

That’s not to say they were abundant—especially by the standards of today, when hype drops regularly number in the tens of thousands. Patta had a good allocation of the “Chlorophyll” Air Max 1, but it wasn’t massive.

“We, for instance, only had 250 pairs of that shoe,” Schmidt says.

At this point, he isn’t certain he still has the shoe tucked away. Patta does not archive its projects. At the very least, Schmidt doesn’t have a pair readily available.

“I probably have it somewhere,” he says.

The effort to bring the shoe back started in 2023, although it didn’t begin focused specifically on the “Chlorophyll” Air Max 1. As Patta’s 20th anniversary approached, the brand had the opportunity to retro one of its Nike projects. Schmidt says Patta had a company-wide discussion about which shoe was most appropriate.

This year’s ‘Chlorophyll’ retro uses the same green denim as the original. Via Patta

There are some tweaks to the 2024 version that separate it from the 2009 original. The upcoming pair has a different sockliner, with a graphic referencing the €20 bill rather than the Dutch guilder. And the latest Air Max retros are shaped differently from how they were 15 years ago (the silhouette has a million variations at this point). Other than that, Schmidt says, the materials are faithful to the first pair.

“The green fabric, the denim-ish green fabric is actually the exact same fabric from that time—they still had it in stock.” he says.

Patta sees the bring back as an opportunity to replenish the stock of “Chlorophyll” Air Max 1s from over a decade ago and usher them from that time to the present. Schmidt will not entertain the conversations, sparked by Nike’s recent decision to remake previously unattainable shoes like the “Wu Tang” Dunks and “Galaxy Foamposites,” that coveted shoes should be protected artifacts that are never granted another life as retros years later.

“Don’t be sad or bitter about us bringing this shit out,” Schmidt urges.

He can’t think of a good reason why shoes like Patta’s, some of which are grails for sneakerheads who came of age in the 2000s, shouldn’t be sold again years later. He likens their re-circulation to that of sought-after vinyl. Why shouldn’t someone be able to enjoy and own a classic Marvin Gaye record or Royal Flush’s “Rotten Apple” on 12-inch?

The purple denim Patta x Nike Air Max 1 from 2009. Via Flight Club

“God bless the people that reissue that shit,” Schmidt says, “because it’s out there for the people.”

Of course, when it comes to limited edition shoes, some of those people will be resellers. Schmidt doesn’t see servicing that crowd as central to Patta’s mission (“That’s not what we do”) but also will not whine about reselling given how Patta began.

In the store’s first phase, the co-founders traveled the world to procure regional styles and resell them in Amsterdam. Back then, Patta didn’t actually have accounts with sneaker brands.

“Me complaining and moaning about reselling—that’s how Patta started,” Schmidt says. “Patta started as a reselling business. But there was a way different mindset.”

He views their pursuit in those days as less monetarily focused. The objective for Patta, Schmidt explains, was to help a local audience sample global flavors in order to get fresh. Now, the brand is serving a much bigger audience with the “Chlorophyll” Air Max 1 retro, and has bigger ambitions as a business.

“This is great for a lot of people to have,” he says. “It’s dope, it’s love, it represents Patta. It makes Patta bigger, and we make money off it.”

Those upsides for him trump any chatter about keeping the sneakers sacred or concerns of providing more stock for the middlemen looking to flip them.

“I’m with the people that wanna have the shoes.”

He puts himself and the rest of team Patta in the same group.

“We were happy too, that we had new pairs to fuckin’ rock, you know?” Schmidt says. “That’s good.”

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