Under Armour has its first seriously cool sneaker in a minute and it took a trip to Washington, DC, to get it done. The sportswear brand, based in Baltimore, linked up with DC streetwear brand and boutique The Museum for their third collaboration together. The first was a flip on a pair of Currys in 2022, and the second reworked the Forge lifestyle sneaker earlier this year, but the most recent has caught more attention than its predecessors.
The Museum, a store in DC run by LeGreg Harrison and Muhammad Hill, this time flipped three different pairs of the Under Armour Apparition, a mesh running shoe that’s in line with the Y2K sneaker trend. The Apparition was one of Under Armour’s first sneakers, launched in 2009, and 15 years later it’s getting an authentic injection of DC culture.
The three shoes are done in colorways that represent the Okame cherry tree, the United States Botanic Garden, and the National Cherry Blossom Festival in DC. The last is a friends-and-family only shoe, with the other two releasing on Aug. 25 in-store and online. Appropriately, the collection is called “Give ‘Em Their Flowers.”
There’s always been a question of when Under Armour would be able to crossover into lifestyle, and it seems like it’s found a winning formula with The Museum.
The Museum x Under Armour Apparition ‘Cherry Blossom.’ Via Under Armour
“It was a risk that Under Armour took to collaborate with a local brand like us. I think it was good for the culture and it definitely gave Under Armour some street cred dealing with us,” says Harrison. “The hardest part is finding the medium point to not offend their typical customer, but still make it make sense for them and for our customer.”
The Apparition model just makes sense right now. We’ve seen the proliferation of mesh running shoes over the past two years, and Under Armour was able to slightly update this archival shoe, adding Hovr technology to the forefoot.
“It’s very, very trendy right now. The whole basketball sneaker thing is tough right now. Everybody’s looking for a mesh runner that lays by the door,” says Hill. “So for us, it was a no-brainer when we first saw it.”
An undeniable thing about the collection, and one of its biggest selling points, is how loud the colors on the sneakers are. The pair inspired by the Botanic Garden is green with hits of red and pink fuzzy laces. The pair for the Okame cherry tree (my personal favorite) is a mix of purple, maroon, pink, and green fuzzy laces. The friends and family pair has an upper adorned with cherry blossoms.
The Museum x Under Armour Apparition ‘Okame Tree.’ Via Under Armour
“One of the things that The Museum is known for is taking a risk on colors,” says Hill. “I remember when I used to get the women’s sneakers back in the day where they only came in the wild colors. I remember people used to give you a hard time about that. Now I see there’s no barriers when it comes to colors for men or women.”
The Cherry Blossom colorway, although it won’t release to the public, makes for an eye-catching shoe. The print is bright and loud, but balanced with the white upper. It’s something that makes a statement, but is still wearable. It’s also the most obvious DC reference across the three different shoes. But the sneaker has a deeper meaning—it’s dedicated to a late friend of Harrison and Hill.
“We made that one the most limited one. And in all honesty, we thought it would be cliche because it’s just like a DC thing and that’s what most tourists know,” says Hill. “But we decided to devote that shoe to someone that used to work for us in our community. We devoted that particular shoe to him. So it’s a little more sentimental than just the actual cherry blossom. And we’re dropping a T-shirt that comes with the shoe and it says, ‘Long live Big Will,’ who passed away last year.”
Harrison says the shoe also makes sense to them, because the cherry blossom signifies friendship, so it only was right that they used this theme to commemorate their friend.
The concept of giving people their flowers extends to the shoes, with them being inspired by flowers, of course, but it was also meant as a tribute to the community of Washington, DC.
Harrison explains that the Okame cherry tree is the tree cherry blossoms bloom from, and that influenced the purple shoe. But the story behind the green sneaker, inspired by the Botanic Garden, has a different genesis. The sneaker was originally influenced by 4/20, with its green colorway, according to Harrison.
The Museum x Under Armour Apparition “Botanical Gardens.” Image via Under Armour
“Earth Day, it has two connotations to it. We’re talking about preserving the community, sustainability and things of that nature, but then we’re talking about the flower that everybody loves,” says Harrison. “In the cannabis sense of things. And so this started out as an Earth Day sneaker, but because of manufacturing timelines, we had to really push it back.”
One of the highlights of the collaboration, which will be love it or hate it for some consumers, are the fuzzy laces that come with.
“We thought that Mo designed a really great shoe, so we were looking for something a little more edgy,” Harrison says of the laces. “The fluffy shoe strings was the kid in us.”
The Museum collaboration might be the first time that some consumers make their way over to the Under Armour bandwagon, and Hill says people are asking him about the sneakers when he wears them out in public.
“They don’t know what they are, they just stop and ask, ‘What are those right there?’” he says. “And then the first thing we do is turn to the back so they can see the The Museum logo.”
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