Jordan Brand walking into the 39th annual FN Achievement Awards to pick up Brand of the Year feels a bit like watching your friend casually win a raffle even though they already own half the prizes. The label spent 2024 and the start of 2025 running circles around everyone else. Call it a victory lap. Call it a reminder. Either way, you probably felt it on your feed.
The Air Jordan 1 hitting its 40th birthday gave the brand a clean excuse to stir things up again. First came the faithful “Bred” re-creation teased at the end of 2024, followed by that cheeky “Unbannable” rollout in early 2025. Jordan literally censored its own shoe everywhere, even the statue outside the United Center. You might’ve blinked twice and wondered if the internet broke, but the stunt worked. People cared again.
Then came the “Shattered Backboard” return with a drone show over New York City because subtlety clearly wasn’t part of the brief. Assouline even dropped a 360-page book titled “Air Jordan.” If you ever wanted proof that flipping one silhouette too many times wasn’t the end of the world, this was it.
Sarah Mensah, the brand’s president, admitted the anniversary cracked open something bigger. “The 40th anniversary really did give us a milestone through which to reimagine the future of the brand,” she said. Her point landed. The team finally stepped back and asked what the next generation actually needs from a shoe their parents won’t shut up about.
Around the same time, Nigel Sylvester lit up sneaker talks with his “Brick by Brick” AJ4. “It’s dope to understand that Jordan Brand, being this basketball-first brand, is extending out to these other sports,” he said. BMX, snowboarding, football — Jordan wasn’t staying in one lane.
Jalen Hurts even won his first Super Bowl wearing two pairs of Jordans in one game because why not. Meanwhile, Undefeated’s long-lost AJ4 collab from 2005 came back with far more than the original 72 pairs. Chris Gibbs said the revival was easy. “We were the first collaborator with Jordan Brand and we thought it was a no-brainer to bring back our original AJ4.”
Retailers felt the shift too. Jaylin Ordone said releases in 2025 “brought me back to when I first started collecting,” though he wished the “Unbannable” project leaned more local. On the creative end, chief design officer Jason Mayden kept the archive from becoming a museum piece. He talked about finding the “right shape, the right proportions, the right ‘secret sauce.’”
Marketers noticed the spark. Caitlin Sargent said they went back to irreverent stories and even ran “real life only” drops that brought lines back. James Bond from Undefeated summed up the emotional side of it. “You forget what it’s like to have an emotional connection to something or someone.”
Jordan didn’t just look back; it made people feel something again. That’s why it’s holding the trophy.
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