NIKE presents Air Max Dolce, a distinctive new silhouette that combines the heritage of Air Max with a contemporary, sculptural approach to everyday design.
Designed to move naturally between sport, streetwear and fashion, Air Max Dolce features a shaped upper with a distinctive cage-like structure, a lace-free construction and a visible Air unit in the heel, which defines its shape and cushioning. The result is a silhouette that feels at once familiar and new: an everyday sneaker, a casual slip-on model, or a more statement-making piece that can also be worked into more sophisticated looks. Air Max Dolce is designed to adapt to whoever wears it, rather than imposing a single way of being worn.
The silhouette arrives in two colourways, Light Magenta and Silver, combining the iconic Air Max DNA with a contemporary, fashion-driven attitude.
The Air Max DNA
Air Max Dolce is rooted in one of Nike’s most important design stories. In 1987, the Air Max line introduced visible Air cushioning for the first time. What began as a technological innovation tied to cushioning quickly became one of the defining elements of Nike’s design language, moving from performance to the track, from the street to becoming a cultural icon.
Air Max Dolce carries this story forward through a silhouette built on that same spirit of innovation, reinterpreted for contemporary everyday use. Its defining elements remain instantly recognisable: the shaped, lace-free upper, the cage-like overlay structure and the visible Air unit in the heel, which defines the sneaker’s sculptural profile. Designed to be versatile, Dolce moves easily from casual moments to more elevated styling.
Two expressions, two colourways
Air Max Dolce initially launched in the Light Magenta colourway, available from 22 August 2026 at a price of 159.99 euros. On 12 September 2026, the silhouette will be joined by the Silver version, featuring a metallic finish that gives the model a contemporary, versatile look.
Both colourways highlight Air Max Dolce’s architectural construction, while offering two different interpretations: from the expressive energy of Light Magenta to the more essential, sophisticated attitude of Silver.
Giving voice to a new generation
The launch of Air Max Dolce also puts a new generation of creatives at its centre. Through the SNKRS app, Nike creates a space dedicated to emerging designers and creatives, inviting them to interpret Dolce through their own point of view, ideas and visual language. The initiative reflects Nike’s commitment to supporting new creative generations, offering them the chance to experiment, create and contribute to the cultural conversation around a new product.
It is, however, in the section dedicated to creatives that the Air Max Dolce project takes on a broader direction. For the Milan launch, Nike doesn’t simply build a campaign around the new silhouette, but places the model at the centre of an experience that weaves together art, sound, fashion and digital culture. On 12 September, at the Dropcity space on via Sammartini 72, Dolce XOXO will bring together eleven names among artists, designers, filmmakers and creative collectives, in a day dedicated to the exhibition that will then continue with a music programme running into the night.
The common thread is a generation that grew up with the visual culture of the early 2000s: the internet as a place to inhabit, personalise and continually rewrite. Glitter, avatars, saved images, customised profiles and the earliest languages of social media thus become not just nostalgic references, but raw material to build from. The idea behind Dolce XOXO is precisely to turn this digital imagery into something physical and shared.
Among the names involved is Sara Sadik, a French artist who works across video, performance and installation. Her research often builds narrative environments suspended between fiction, pop culture and science fiction, also drawing on video games and internet languages to explore identity, adolescence, belonging and transformation. Hers is a particularly fitting presence for the project, since her work starts precisely from the possibility of building new worlds through images and codes belonging to contemporary culture.
Alongside her, Tudor Ciurescu brings a practice that spans image, object, photography, print and sculpture. Born in Romania and now active between Lausanne and Milan, the artist works on the relationship between visual culture, memory and contemporary imagery, often putting analogue and digital references into dialogue with one another.
Another interesting presence is Forniture Pallotta, an artistic project founded by Alessandra Pallotta that uses food as creative material. The collective works across food design, installation, performance and set design, turning edible elements into genuine visual and narrative constructions. This approach further expands the vocabulary of Dolce XOXO: the sneaker is no longer considered simply as a design object, but as a starting point for a series of interpretations involving different languages.
Rounding out the exhibition are Mika Ben Amar, Common Index, Due000 Contemporary Archive, Hollywood Superstar Review, Emir Karyo, Luna Mahoux, Rat Section and Brennan Wojtyla, bringing together different practices and sensibilities within the same space. The day, however, doesn’t end with the exhibition. From 11pm to 3am, Dolce XOXO shifts gear and the exhibition space turns into a club, with Renoiterrible, Rat Section and Spiritual Sauna at the centre of the music line-up. The logic stays the same: take a culture born online and bring it back into the physical world, turning shared references into a collective experience.
Air Max Dolce is almost the pretext through which Nike builds a broader discourse on the way design, fashion, art and the internet influence one another today. The sneaker remains at the centre, but stops being the end point and becomes an object around which a new generation of creatives can build images, atmospheres and languages.
