Comme des Garçons is an odd collaborator for Nike. They are among Nike’s most regular and long-lasting partners, yet deeply predictable. Namely, the shoe will be in black or white, it will be a new version of an old silhouette tested before wider market release, and despite using no better materials than the final retail pairs, the Comme des Garçons pairs will have extortionate price tags.

At their worst, this leads to an endless number of canvas Nikes in all black with nothing unique besides a debossed Comme des Garçons logo and a $300+ price tag. At their best, though, Comme des Garçons defines the silhouette, and everything that follows is a shadow of it. The ACG Mowabb is a ruggedized high-top version of the classic Nike Huarache, and while fine, it’s hardly special or interesting. But the all-white, suede-paneled Comme des Garçons pair? They’re art.

Even more astonishingly, the same is true with their brand-new version of the Nike Foamposite themed around the 2024 Olympics. It’s their second take on a silhouette that first came out in 1997, and there’s no better version than this.

For the unfamiliar, the Nike Foamposite was a groundbreaking basketball shoe for Penny Hardaway. Though successful on the court, the real trick was its construction and design. The shoe comes in three parts: an inner fabric mesh bootie with leather eyelets, a stiff herringbone-pattern outsole for excellent on-court grip and lateral performance, and the surrounding wrap-around polyurethane exoskeleton.

Inspired by beetles, this created incredible lockdown and on-court stiffness and a timeless iconic design that was almost impossible to make. Daewoo was the only company that could pull it off, and the molds were some of the most expensive on any sneaker, requiring liquid polyurethane to be poured in and then heated at a specific temperature until solid. Too hard and it would be too brittle; too weak and it would rip.

This meant that for both Nike and the end consumer, these were an extremely expensive sneaker, and only more so when the original molds were lost, and Nike had to rebuild them to make new versions. Over the years, there have been interesting versions of the Foamposite, but they’ve just used the side as a canvas for bold designs. There were the Supreme Foamposites and the riot-provoking Galaxy Foamposites, but they merely added bold patterns to the existing design.

With their new Foamposite, Comme des Garçons has elevated it. They use a custom mold for the outer panels with Zen-garden inspired concentric circles, making them distinct and sophisticated. Comme des Garçons first introduced these in 2021 with two colorways — all black and all white — but there were qualities that made them inferior to the new version. The all-black pair were plain for the price, making the white pair more beautiful, but starch-white and soft plastic made them unwearable. Additionally, Foamposites are expensive, but $520 was a lot for those.

With the new version, the design and price have been tweaked, both for the better. The color is now an elegant marbled black and grey, reminiscent of light passing over a gloss black surface. The pull tabs on the tongue and heel counter are in bronze, silver, and gold stripes in honor of the Olympics. Finally, the price has dropped by about $100 to £335 or about $430. That’s still an expensive pair of shoes, but they’re perhaps the best version ever of one of the greatest shoes ever made. That’s worth it for me.

The original Foamposite was $180 in 1997, or $350 in today’s money, so you’re not paying much of a premium over them.