Nike Air Max 95, Sergio Lozano's Anatomy Lesson in Neon

In November 1996 a Tokyo shop called AC/DC Rag Store had a yellow and grey Nike Air Max from the previous year on sale for $1,345. Police across Japan were dealing with a wave of thefts and holdups in which young men were beaten or threatened and their Nikes taken. The Japanese press had a name for it, Air Max hunting. The Seattle Times ran the story under the headline Air Max Hunting Shocks Japan.

The shoe was the Air Max 95, and it was designed by a man from Nike's outdoor department.

The ACG Guy Gets the Air Max

By 1994 Tinker Hatfield had moved on from the Air Max line, the franchise he'd started with the window in the Air Max 1. The next one went to Sergio Lozano, a designer working in ACG, Nike's All Conditions Gear category. That was an odd pick on paper. ACG made hiking boots and trail shoes, and the Air Max was Nike's showcase runner.

Lozano went to the human body for his reference. In Nike's own telling, the outsole was modeled on a spine, the lacing system on a set of ribs, and the layered mesh and suede panels on muscle fibers. The panels run in bands from dark grey near the sole to pale grey near the collar, so the side of the shoe reads like something with tissue and bone under it. The Speed-Lacing eyelets wrap from the top of the shoe down to the sockliner, and the Swoosh got pushed back to a small spot on the heel, which was strange for a flagship Nike in 1995.

The shoe was meant for bigger, more powerful runners who needed all the cushioning they could get. That explains the forefoot. The Air Max 95 put visible Air under the front of the foot as well as the heel, a first for the line. It also sat on a black midsole, an unusual choice then, picked so the shoe would hide the dirt from runs.

The Color Wasn't New

The original colorway is the one everyone means. Grey gradient, black sole, and bright yellow on the eyelets, the Swoosh and the Air units. Sneaker people call it Neon.

A popular version of the story says the 95 introduced that yellow to Nike. Lozano's own account, in a Nike feature on the shoe, says otherwise. He has said the neon yellow was already in the company's palette and part of its racing heritage, and that he used it to draw the eye to the technology and the shoe's working parts. Take his word over the legend. What the 95 did was put that color on a shoe people wanted to wear off the track, and that changed what it meant.

Why Did London Call Them 110s?

In Britain the shoe retailed at £110, and that's what London called it. Nobody needed the model name. Around the turn of the millennium the 95 became something close to an unofficial uniform for grime, the sound coming out of East London. The way rap and its offshoots have dressed is traced in our history of hip-hop menswear.

The connection has never faded. In 2023 the London label Corteiz released its own Air Max 95s with Nike, and the brand returned to the shoe again in 2025. If you want to see the city's sneaker scene at street level, our London Soho and Dover Street Market guide is the place to start.

Tokyo, 1996

Japan's version of the obsession burned hotter and shorter. The same Seattle Times report described magazines like Boon, Cool and Get On! putting Nikes on their covers, shops buying up unsold pairs around the world and holding them until prices climbed, and older models on Takeshita Street in Harajuku going for $700 to $1,400. A Nike Japan spokesman said the demand was real but inflated by the shops and the magazines. Fakes became a problem alongside the thefts. In Japanese the robberies were called Air Max gari.

It was an early, loud preview of the market we now take for granted, the one we break down in our piece on the sneaker resale economy. The streets where it played out are mapped in our Ura-Harajuku guide.

Thirty-One Years On

The 95 holds up because it was designed from an idea instead of a trend. Lots of 1990s runners look dated now. This one still looks like a diagram of the body that it was always meant to be. It is heavy for a running shoe and few people run in it. It doesn't matter. The grey gradient works with almost anything darker than it, and the Neon is still the best pair, even after decades of colorways.

Nike tells its side in Behind the Design, Air Max 95. More sneaker history and Japanese street culture lives under Japan, and the rest of the shoe wall is in the sneakers section.

Flip a pair of OG Neons over and the black midsole Lozano pushed for is still doing exactly what he said it would. It hides the dirt.