Nike Dunk Low Gum Pack - Deep Royal Blue

First recipe: tan or khaki chinos with a cream crewneck and a brown leather jacket, where the gum sole ties into the warm tones and the royal blue supplies the only cold colour. This is the pairing gum soles exist for. Second recipe: black straight jeans with a white tee and a navy overshirt, a tonal blue outfit where the amber sole keeps things from going flat. Deep Royal Blue fights with purple, teal and most greens. Dunks fit true with a slightly narrow toe box. Gum soles yellow and mark with use, so wipe them with a damp cloth regularly, avoid solvent cleaners which soften the rubber, and accept some darkening as normal.

The Dunk's journey from hardwood to street ran through skateboarding, and gum soles are a direct borrowing from that world. Nike SB's history there includes its 2005 appropriation of Minor Threat's album art, which drew a public rebuke from Ian MacKaye and an apology from the company, a reminder that the shape has always been borrowed from communities with their own standards. In the wider picture, Nike became a status symbol in urban and hip hop fashion from the 1980s onward through Air Jordans, Air Force 1s and Air Max models, and the Dunk eventually joined them. A royal blue on gum is the version that leans workwear rather than collector.

The Dunk Low chassis is unchanged: a low cut leather panel upper on a cupsole with the toe, quarter panel, Swoosh and heel blocked separately. What a gum outsole changes is more than colour. Gum rubber is softer and grippier than standard white rubber, which is why skate and work footwear have used it for decades, and the trade is that it wears faster and picks up dirt more readily. Nike's outsole thinking has run in one line since Bill Bowerman poured rubber into a waffle iron and produced the tread that made the 1972 Moon Shoe and 1974 Waffle Trainer: cut the rubber so it grips in more than one direction. Deep Royal Blue leather over amber gum gives the shoe visual weight at the bottom.