PHANTACi x Nike Air Max 1 Grand Piano

HOLY CRAP. Is this the best looking pair of sneakers in my house? Yeah, very possibly. Too damn bad they're not mine! Naw see I tried like hell to grab a pair of these, but since there were only like 400 pair made, all released in Asia, I couldn't manage to find em in my size. Thankfully, I did find them in my wife's size though, so she bought em. Hey, at least someone in the house owns these.

The PHANTACi x Nike Air Max 1 Grand Piano is a colab with Taiwan-based sneaker store PHANTACi and obviously the colorway was inspired by a grand piano as well as the signature pink color of the PHANTACi stores--but didja know that it was co-designed by Taiwanese pop culture superstar Jay Chou? You never heard of him, right? You're sitting there wondering, "who's he?" right? Yeah well, since you don't know, lemme drop some knowledge on ya: Jay Chou is one of the most popular musician/singer/songwriter/producers in Taiwan. He's just the biggest selling Mandarin Chinese recording artist of the past four years. In China, he's the second most searched celebrity behind Britney Spears. Oh shit, did I forget to mention that he's also written a book, starred in a bunch of movies, and even directed movies?

So yeah, he's kind of a big deal.

The fact that he co-designed these kicks shows just how big of a name he is over there. I mean, how often does any celebrity outside of the sneaker world get to design sneaker colorways? Okay yeah, so Kanye got a shoe. Who else? Yeah see, that's what I'm sayin.

The first 200 pair of these were offered in special packaging with some freebies (cool pink box, t-shirt, pink dubrays, and a bracelet) but those sold out pretty much instantly so I couldn't get my hands on them but to be able to get these AT ALL is special enough since there were so few made whatsoever, special packaging or not.

By the way--even if Nike woulda made fifty-gajillion of these, I'd still think they're the best looking sneaker in my house. They are DOPE-AS-HELL, regardless of their limited production.