Nike Killshot 2 sneaker

>$90, Buy now at Nike

Of all the hit collaborative sneakers that the Swoosh has dropped over the past decade or so, the Nike Killshot 2 stands above the rest as the most confounding—and also maybe the most successful. The collaborator in question isn’t an all-star designer like Virgil Abloh, or a high-art master like Tom Sachs, or even a Netflix smash like Stranger Things. Instead, the mastermind behind one of Nike’s biggest recent sneaks is none other than (perpetually unstable!) mall fave J.Crew.

Since its first release way back in 2012, J.Crew’s take on the Nike Killshot 2—a relatively innocuous tennis silhouette from the ‘70s—continues to sell out every time it’s restocked, and it’s been restocked a lot. That fact alone defies a basic principle of sneaker culture: that the more widely available a sneaker becomes, no matter how hot it is, the wacker it gets. It’s why Air Jordan sometimes waits decades between re-releases of their classics, and how the Nike React Element 87 can go from Shoe of the Summer one year to having full size runs populating sale sections the next.

But fans of the Killshot 2 are not your typical sneakerheads. They’re r/MaleFashionAdvice types, drawn to the sneaker for its vintage-y details, easy wearability, and sub-$100 price point. They’re the guys on your commute to work, of whom—and I wish I were kidding here—I saw two wearing Killshots this very morning. And thus far, for seven whole years, they’ve consistently sold their go-to kicks out every time J.Crew dutifully proffers more.

Now, though, their loyalty is about to be tested, because J.Crew is no longer the only place to cop these bizarrely legendary sneakers. At long last, the Killshot 2 has returned to the mothership: Nike has ‘em for sale on their own website, and as of right now there are plenty of pairs in plenty of sizes still available. Will this newfound stream of availability be the straw that finally breaks the Killshot 2’s seemingly unkillable hype? Or will the Reddit menswear heads just come out even stronger and in even bigger numbers? We’re about to find out.