Where the Victor Victor Air Force 1 Drop Went Wrong

The real goofy stuff started with the two blue shoes.

Explained in an Instagram video by DJ Khaled, who once got lost at sea on a jet ski, showing the camera two pairs of blue leather Nike Air Force 1s with Steven Victor’s Victor Victor dog head on the lateral heel. 

“Not this blue,” he said, holding one of the two pairs up to the camera, before panning to the next. “It’s a different blue.”

Next, Steven Victor did the same, holding up two blue shoes, treating sneakerheads like Pam keeping Creed busy finding the differences between two identical photos in the heavily memed scene from The Office.

“You’re not colorblind, are you? I know you’re not colorblind.” Victor asks you through the camera.

But more than just tricking DJ Khaled out of trusting his eyes, the entire Victor Victor x Nike Air Force 1 ‘01 drop has been a study in sneaker collaborators getting a bit too big for their britches. No matter what you think of the pairs themselves, the Victor Victor AF1 ‘01 drop has been a study in attention spans, the struggles of modern celebrity, and the difference between anticipation and frustration.

Why Does Steven Victor Have His Own Sneakers?

Steven Victor made a name for himself as the driving behind-the-scenes force pushing New York rapper Pop Smoke to prominence. Victor was behind the scenes with Star Trak and Good Music for years, and in the time since Pop Smoke’s tragic death, Victor has continued to work in the music industry. But he’s also used his growing fame to launch Victor Victor, a streetwear brand with graphics made up entirely of the brand name and his pet dog head logo slapped on T-shirts, hats, hoodies, and more.

Victor Victor has collaborated with Nike in the past, creating a triple-white Air Force with a dog head on the heel in 2024 (which he teased would release, but never happened) and pairs of the Air Max DN8 last fall with limited, in-store drops in New York and Japan, corresponding to the origins of the race cars that influenced the colorways. One year later, Victor is back with Nike, back crafting colorways based on race cars, and back with city-specific in-person drops. This time, though, the shoes are better, the drops are worse, and Steven has made himself the focus of the whole endeavor, creating a months-long shitshow that’s left most sneakerheads more annoyed with Steven Victor than excited about the shoes.

When Victor first started rolling out his AF1 ‘01 previews, the newly retroed 2001 shape had just been announced and only existed in collabs from Victor Victor and NIGO. Now, the model is sitting on shelves at boutiques in leather and suede colorways, taking at least some of the shine away from the Victor Victor pack.

A Drop Designed to Live in Resale Purgatory

So where did he go wrong? Well, first of all, we’ve been looking at the simple two-tone Air Force 1 ‘01 colorways since May, nearly half a year ago. At first, the debut of the first two colorways on Wemby’s tunnel walks was cute. Two Victors, two Nike deals, one name repeated twice. A month later, DJ Khaled debuted the red colorway and LeBron the purple. You may not think of Steven Victor as a mogul, but his seeding list made clear he wants you to.

The problem is, moguls typically have a lot going on, and for Steven Victor, it seems like he’s spent the past six months focusing exclusively on six pairs of Air Force 1s - sorry, 7; we can’t forget about the second blue hue. With each colorway dropping in 1,000 pairs or less, the scarcity drove hype, but also made the elongated rollout feel stretched beyond its limit. At this point, the overriding thought about the collection is simply, get it over with, already.

Instead of letting the sneakers speak for themselves, at some point, Victor started speaking about them, and, like his Jay-Z Blue Hue Cindy Loo Hoo video, the condescending tone left us a little skeptical. From the shit show at ComplexCon to the destined-to-fail pop-up in New York City, and more of the same anticipated in Detroit, the long, drawn-out drops seem designed for pushing and shoving clips to land on social media, leaving even the colorways’ biggest fans weighing if they even want to try their hand at copping.

Too Big to Fail

And if the pairs were from a brand that actually sold worthwhile clothing, or a celeb personality who had any standing in the sneaker industry, it might be worth overlooking. The game is the game, after all. But when Victor visited the Complex offices to talk shit about other drops and campaign for sneaker of the year, any cool factor the collection still had started to fall flat. After his stump speech, Complex put the shoe at 8 on its year-end list, but the follow-up fan-voted consensus that’s been circulating on social media left it off entirely.

Now, don’t get it twisted, there have been and will continue to be massive unruly lines at each of the Victor Victor pop-up drops, with resale prices skyrocketing as soon as the limited pairs are sold. But if sell-outs and resale are your only measures of success, the Black Pack 16s and Adizero Adios Evo Pro 3 deserve more love.

At the end of the drawn-out process, Victor’s Air Force 1 ‘01 collection feels exactly like what it is: a music mogul trying to bring his over-the-top boardroom-bending schtick to the sneaker industry, with a puffed-up chest pushing big names and grand plans that outweigh the strength of the final product.

Zach Harris

Zach Harris is a writer based in Philadelphia. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Vice, Complex, High Times, and more. He is obsessed with skateboarding and bowling. He is still looking for his first 300. For tips, reviews, and anything in size 10.5 - zach.h@soleretriever.com