Nike Dunk High / Futura FLOM LIVESTRONG White Sample

The Nike Dunk High FLOM LIVESTRONG White Sample dates to 2009, when Nike and New York artist Futura revisited one of the most elusive designs from their earlier relationship as part of the LIVESTRONG Greatest Hits programme. The example documented here is a US size 9 unreleased sample distinguished by white leather overlays, coloured currency-print panels and yellow Futura Laboratories detailing. Sotheby’s authenticated and catalogued the pair in 2024 but identifies it as a sample that never entered full production.

The design traces back to Futura’s original FLOM, or “For Love or Money,” Nike SB Dunk High. Futura Laboratories dates that project to 2004 and connects it to the opening of the artist’s Fukuoka flagship. Rather than creating a conventional commercial release, Futura used the shoes primarily as gifts, turning their international-currency print into a question about friendship, desire and financial value. Nike SB’s own archive records a friends-and-family production of 24 pairs.

In 2009 Nike returned to FLOM within its wider partnership with the Lance Armstrong Foundation. The LIVESTRONG Greatest Hits programme reinterpreted a group of established Nike collaborations through the foundation’s black-and-yellow visual language, alongside Nike’s wider STAGES art initiative. The production FLOM Dunk released through selected retailers on 18 July 2009 for US$150, with proceeds supporting the Lance Armstrong Foundation. It used black leather overlays, monochrome currency imagery, yellow laces and outsole details, and LIVESTRONG branding.

The white sample records a materially different stage in that development. In place of the commercial version’s black leather, the sample uses crisp white leather around a currency print rendered in colour, visually reconnecting the 2009 shoe with the earlier FLOM. Futura’s signature is executed in LIVESTRONG yellow on one heel while the opposing shoe carries the yellow FL mark of Futura Laboratories. The tongue labels and insoles retain LIVESTRONG branding. Sotheby’s describes this colourway as an unrealised alternative that did not proceed into full production.

Its exact sample classification and production quantity require caution. Nike Look See prototypes are commonly produced in men’s US size 9 during the development process, and the size of this example is consistent with that practice. Specialist accounts have consequently referred to the white FLOM as a Look See sample. Earlier collector testimony also records white FLOM samples circulating with Nike sample identification. No surviving Nike production document has been identified, however, that establishes the precise number manufactured or proves that this physical pair was the only example. The Archive therefore describes it simply as an unreleased sample and does not assign an edition size.

That distinction becomes important because later secondary reporting occasionally described the white colourway as one-of-one. The available evidence does not support that degree of certainty. Its collecting significance instead lies in what can be demonstrated: it is an authentic Nike sample of a design that diverges substantially from the 2009 commercial release and preserves a developmental link between the original FLOM currency language and the later LIVESTRONG interpretation.

The owner subsequently entrusted this example to Disndat to explore a sale. Disndat worked with Sotheby’s towards its proposed inclusion as Lot 757 in the March 2024 Paris Important Sneakers and Modern Collectibles auction, where Sotheby’s prepared an estimate of €85,000–95,000 and featured the pair in associated editorial material. The consignment did not ultimately proceed to a public transaction. Sotheby’s surviving lot record marks it as withdrawn, and no auction result exists.

For Disndat, the object was compelling because it illustrates a particularly important category of collectible: an object whose significance comes not from public release but from the decision not to release it. The production LIVESTRONG FLOM records what Nike, Futura and the project eventually chose. The white sample preserves one of the possibilities left behind.