sneakerheads tip their beanies to this entirely paperized NIKE x sean wotherspoon air max

lydia kasumi shirreff spent 6 months re-creating her husband’s shoe entirely out of paper. enter: the NIKE X sean wotherspoon air max 1/97. sneakerheads will tip their beanies to this iconic, low-cut corduroy wash of waving colors that sells for up to $1,500 bucks online — yellows, pinks, greys, greens, blues and a splosh of brown to accent a tiny golden swish. just wait until you see the real thing side by side with lydia’s. they’re identical, except for lydia’s colors: as pure as laminated pantones, as sharp as corduroy papercuts.

lydia kasumi shirreff is a self-proclaimed paper pony living with her husband in london. it was most likely in the early and late weekend hours, between other commissioned projects, that lydia challenged herself with the tedious techniques it would take to perfectly paperize the airmax’s. each raised line of faux fabric is made from individual slivers of hand-cut, hand-glued @colorplan_papers paper.

the sole is embossed with layers of paper and the kerning and arch between and along the A  I  R are spaced to perfection aside a tiny NIKE logo. the trials, the errors, the thousands of paper pieces and the hundreds of hunched hours gluing them (plus accompanying shoulder pains) must have been tremendous, but surprisingly easiest of all, @lydiakshirreff says on her instagram, was color-grading: ‘would you believe me if I said somehow by magic I had all the right colours in stock? Being a paper hoarder pays off.’ 

lydia told designboom, ‘I was looking for a slight change of pace from my every day, deadline-based commission work. I knew I wanted to create a follow-up to a series of trainers I’d made 5 or 6 years ago, and I knew it had to be iconic. my husband is a proud owner of these sean wotherspoon airmax’s so it ended up being an easy choice. the detail, texture and technical challenges made for a perfect long project. all aspects of the trainer are completely hand-made from paper and it took 6 months between jobs to create.’