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Air Jordans were harmed in the making of this product. In 2023, when Jordan Brand started work on recreating a 2025 reissue of the original black and red Air Jordan 1, that mythical “Banned” sneaker that kickstarted Air Jordan mania when it released in 1985, the aim was to make the latest version as close to the earliest version as possible. This was to be a 40th anniversary sneaker, a celebration of the genesis of Air Jordan. It would require sacrifice.
In making the new shoe, Jordan Brand stripped down old pairs for parts. To recreate the nylon used on the tongue, designers cut that piece out of a 1985 pair and had a chemist melt it down to examine the chemical composition of the material. Sneakers were lobotomized and dissected to serve the goal of remaking the first-ever Air Jordan.
“We had a few members of the design team that put their pairs up for sacrifice,” says Jason Grisby, a Jordan product director who worked on this year’s Air Jordan 1 High 85 retro.
The Air Jordan 1 High 85 will debut on Feb. 14 in the black and red “Banned” colorway (style code HV6674-067) for $250. It’s meant to be a return to form for Michael Jordan’s first signature shoe, the silhouette of which has been warped and shifted over the years. (The High 85 model coming out next month won’t be the only cut the Jordan 1 comes in going forward—the others aren’t going anywhere.) Jordan Brand is positioning this new ‘25 build of shoe as the Air Jordan 1 that comes closest to the platonic ideal of the 1985 original.
“We wanted to be really, really intentional about the specifications, the story, all of the cultural equity being mirrored back,” Grisby says.
This meant consulting with old shoe dogs who were at Nike when Air Jordan was gestating, like Bruce Kilgore, best known as the designer of the Air Force 1, and Brad Johnson, who worked on the original Jordans as a product line manager. (Peter Moore, the designer behind the Jordan 1, passed in 2022.) It meant spending nearly a month at a factory in China fussing over the retro Jordan’s most minute details.
At some point in the creation of the Air Jordan 1 High 85 retro for this year, Jordan Brand employees paused to ask themselves whether the devotion to the minutiae of shape and leather thickness were worth the effort. Will people know? Does it matter? Their answer was yes.
Jordan Brand’s hope is that the sneaker will satisfy even the fussiest of collectors. This might come at the alienation of those without the discerning eye to pick out what makes this Air Jordan 1 stand apart. In a conversation with Complex about the shoe’s creation, Grisby reiterates that it’s meant to be a one-to-one recreation. This is not an up-specced Jordan 1 with tumbled leather panels a la the coveted “Shattered Backboard” pair from 2015.
In some ways the Air Jordan 1 High 85 reissue feels like a response to the high-end handmade Jordan 1 replicas created by independent makers like Xylar Studio, who’ve propped up a cottage industry dedicated to remaking (totally unauthorized) Jordan 1s better than Jordan Brand has.
In other ways, the High 85 is a response to the idea of shoes as investments and collectibles instead of functional pieces of sports equipment.
“It’s functioning more like an asset class,” Grisby says, “like art or jewelry, rather than sneakers.”
There is already groaning about the price—$250 is a new high benchmark for a Jordan 1 retail price, save for a handful of special editions—but that might not matter much. Early signs indicate that it will be a tough-to-track-down limited release. Multiple retailers carrying the shoes have told Complex that units are scarce and that only 23 wholesale accounts will have them. Jordan Brand declined to comment on how limited the sneaker will be.
Jordan Brand, via Grisby, did have plenty to offer on the nuances of the new Air Jordan 1 High 85 retro, the hardest parts to recreate from Jordan’s originals, and why remaking the shoe was like trying to sign your signature the exact same way 40 years later. Here, according to Jordan Brand, is what sets the Air Jordan 1 High 85 apart from other retros and aligns it more closely with the 1985 design.
The thing most sneakerheads will look to judge right away on an Air Jordan 1 is the leather. You can already see that playing out in the online reactions to early looks at the sneaker. We’ll say it again: this is not a tumbled leather Air Jordan 1; the 1985 Air Jordan 1s did not have tumbled leather, so neither does this one. The leather here is flatter, with a kind of matte finish.
“These are effectively made to be one-to-one replicas of the original,” Grisby says.
According to Jordan Brand, the leather used on the Air Jordan 1 High ‘85 is a higher quality leather than what’s used on other Air Jordan 1s, and isn’t being used on any other models. It’s meant to be thicker.
“We looked to get the materials as close as possible to the original from a thickness standpoint, from a hand-feel perspective,” Grisby says.
The team developing the Air Jordan 1 High 85 retro dug through whatever notes were leftover from the production of the original Air Jordan 1 in 1985 to look for clues about the leather used on the originals. They were able to track down its peculiar name, “gluv leather,” but weren’t able to source the exact same leather for this year’s pair. Part of that is because there just wasn’t a ton of thorough documentation about the process of making Jordans in 1985. History made the sneakers legendary, but their creation may not have been as romantic or intentional as the legends suggest.
It’s a little early to tell how the leather will handle creases and folds. The new Air Jordan 1 High 85 did not feel plush to me when I first pulled it out of the box, but also, the sneaker didn’t wrinkle up when I bent it back and forth. I’ve not yet worn the shoe to see how the leather fares in action. I do own a 1985 pair, but my original Air Jordan 1s are extremely worn, so a leather comparison there feels unfair.
Jordan Brand knows that it can’t control how people will respond to the leather. But at the very least, it wants people to know that this Air Jordan 1 looks how it does for a reason.
“It’s subjective at the end of the day, because people are completely allowed to feel what they want to feel,” Grisby says. “I think the biggest thing is context and knowing that this is the intention.”
Jordan Brand wants the leather on this Air Jordan 1 to get better with age. What may be stiff right out of the box is meant to be broken in to be truly enjoyed. Grisby likens the shoe to a good leather jacket or an Eames lounge chair.
“The goal is that it wears well over time,” he says.
The trope will be familiar to Air Jordan 1 devotees, many of whom will justify a properly thrashed pair by claiming the more beat they get the better they are. (We agree with the sentiment in general, but there is a limit to this.)
The original Air Jordan 1s stand out in this regard, and pairs can usually tolerate regular wear 40 years later thanks to their simple components of rubber and leather. That’s not the case for the other original Air Jordan models from the ‘80s and ‘90s, most of which are prone to crumbling soles. My 1985 Air Jordan 1s are absolutely pasted and still nowhere near falling apart.
“We wanted to set the shoe up that we’re releasing this year to basically be able to be worn decades from now,” Grisby says.
One hopes that the Air Jordan 1 High 85 will hold up better than the Air Jordan 1s of the late 2010s. Some of those pairs, like the last releases of the “Banned” and the black and blue “Royal” Jordan 1s, will succumb to a mysterious film of sparkly dust if they’re tucked away in their boxes for too long. When I pulled out my “Royal” Jordan 1s from 2017 to compare them to this year’s “Banned” pair, the upper was coated in a glittery sheen.
The latest Air Jordan 1 is made of a completely different material, according to Jordan Brand, and shouldn’t have the same problem.
“We don’t expect that to happen with these,” Grisby says. “Obviously time will tell.”
The hardest part for the designers to get right when remaking the shoe was the shape. This has been a decades-long process. Grisby points to the first Air Jordan retros, produced circa ‘94, as the versions that best recreated the 1985 Air Jordan 1, prior to this year’s remake.
“Each iteration has gotten a little closer and a little closer to the original 1985,” Grisby says. “This one was intended to be the closest to date.”
When Jordan Brand first embarked on the 40th anniversary reissue, it did so by drafting off shapes of other reissues. Ultimately, the design team made the decision to instead start from scratch and rebuild the shoe from the bottom up.
The Air Jordan 1 High 85 isn’t as tall as some recent Air Jordan 1 retros. I found the 2016-era Air Jordan 1 build to be visibly taller, whereas the collar height on the 2025 pair I have in hand is within millimeters of the collar height on my original 1985 pair.
Jordan Brand concedes that recreating the originals one-to-one here is an impossible task as there was not one consistent height across the original pairs. Back then, Air Jordans came from a handful of different factories, and their output was not identical nor totally standardized.
“There was disparity in pairs because they have five different sources,” Grisby says.
Where else did Jordan Brand seek to perfect the shape for the “Banned” Air Jordan 1 High 85? There’s the back side, which flares out at the top of the collar and tapers down at the midsole. The midsole shape is striking when viewed from behind, especially in contrast to the more straight up-and-down one on the 2016-era Jordan 1s, but I found the same taper on my 1985 pair. According to Jordan, the almost egg-shaped bend to it was done on purpose.
There’s also the toebox, a section of the shoe that Jordan Brand spent a great deal of time on. It’s one of those pieces of sneaker anatomy that obsessives immediately check for historical accuracy, as Grisby well knows.
“One of the most critical areas of any shoe is the toe,” he says. “If you don’t get that toe right, you’re kind of disqualified from the jump.”
“The 1985 Air Jordan 1 is the pinnacle iteration of the Air Jordan 1 line,” Grisby says when asked about the price. “It’s a premium offering based on the execution, cultural legacy, exclusivity, enduring design, lasting value, and wearability.”
Air Jordan fans offering feedback in comments sections on social media do not seem to be ready to hand over $250 for a pair of Air Jordan 1s. Sneaker collectors have long accepted way heftier prices on the secondary market, but there’s been a decent amount of pre-launch sticker shock for those unwilling to stomach a $250 retail price for the remake of a 40-year-old sneaker made of old fashioned rubber and leather.
Jordan Brand believes that it’s justified in charging that much based partly on the extent to which other brands have copied its designs to create their own expensive, high-end takes on the Jordan 1—Saint Laurent’s $600 SL/10H model is probably the most famous example here.
Jordan put a significant amount of time and energy into the creation of this Jordan 1. The shoe comes with a new tooling, which is an expensive component in footwear manufacturing that will generally up the cost of production.
Jordan Brand pointed to the shoe’s rarity, legacy, the balance of supply and demand, and the intentionality of this remake as factors that went into determining the price.
The bumpy texture along the midsole of the Air Jordan 1 High 85 is digitally replicated from what was used on Air Jordan 1s back in 1985.
“Each little nub of rubber is actually taken one-for-one from the original 1985,” Grisby explains, “which was hand-carved in the ’80s.”
This is a detail that most would gloss over—I’ve never seen complaints about the midsole pattern on past Air Jordan 1s—but looking back at a pair from the 2010s, I can clearly see the difference in this year’s version. My pair of Air Jordan 1s from 2017 has a more uniform pattern along the midsole, where the tiny cuts line up with each other. On the 2025 pair, the application feels like it’s more random, creating the impression of an imprecise, human touch on the midsole, as on the originals.
If you look at a 1985 pair of Air Jordan 1s up close, you might notice how the Swoosh on the upper sticks out from the rest of the shoe. Run your finger along that section of the sneaker and you’ll feel the difference. Jordan Brand says the 1985s used synthetic leather for the logo, which contrasts with the legit leather used on the rest of the shoe.
In recreating the sneaker, the designers of the new Jordan 1 retro had to consider whether to be faithful to that subtle difference in materials. They had a debate as to whether the Swoosh should have real leather or, like the original, synthetic leather.
Jordan Brand decided to have the Air Jordan 1 High 85 retro mimic the original in this regard, too; its Swoosh is made of synthetic leather where the shoe uses authentic leather elsewhere.
Where else does the upcoming black and red Air Jordan 1 High 85 stick painstakingly close to the source material? The inside of the shoe has the same marks as the first pairs.
The inner collar, for instance, has the shoe size, production dates, and initials indicating the supplier factory. (This is an OG-style detail that’s been used on Air Jordan 1 retros before.) And it goes deeper than that.
On the inner side of the tongue tag, there’s a bit of legalese text pertaining to Nike and its trademarks. The text comes in English and French, as it did on the original—this part is nothing new, and is there on the 2016 release. But that 2016 had one (dia) critical error: the French text reading fabriqué en Chine (for “made in China”) was missing an accent on the word fabriqué. The 2025 pair amends the error, with the proper fabriqué as it appeared on the 1985 pairs.
It’s a minute and almost imperceptible change. It’s the type of tweak that borders on pointless—you have to be a real freak to be looking at your sneakers that close. But that’s the length Jordan Brand wanted to go to to get this version of the Air Jordan 1 right.
“It’s that level of detail,” Grisby says.
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