Exclusive: Nike, KAWS, and Sky High Workwear Cooked Up an Epic New Air Force 1

How do you make a red-hot sneaker collab between two of the world’s biggest artists—the legendary KAWS and Dan Colen of the infamous IRAK crew—even better? You use the drop to raise money for a seriously worthy cause.

Dover Street Market is celebrating its tenth anniversary in New York City on December 16, and to honor that milestone, the iconic retailer is unveiling a brand-new collaboration between Sky High Farm Workwear and Nike. The 10-piece capsule collection is an innovative reimagining of existing Nike favorites—including a chore coat, a hoodie, a beanie, and two Air Force 1 colorways—all done up in KAWS’s signature style.

While the capsule is sure to be highly coveted by KAWS collectors and New York streetwear enthusiasts, there’s much more to the collaboration than hype. Sky High Farm Workwear has been built under the umbrella of Sky High Farm Universe, a brand co-founded by Colen and Daphne Seybold to support the nonprofit, which provides underprivileged communities with food security and works to create pathways to food sovereignty since its founding in 2012. Like all of Sky High Farm Universe’s collabs with high-profile artists and retailers, a portion of profits generated by this collection will be pumped back into the nonprofit so that they can continue to provide high-quality, nutrient-rich food to those who really need it.

One of the things that Colen has learned leading Sky High Farm over the last decade is “how problematic and complicated philanthropy is,” he told GQ. “It’s a very exclusive world, almost an ivory tower in and of itself, even though it proposes to be a device to help those who need it the most,” he said. “It really is structured to benefit the donor class, the wealthy people—people who have the time and the contacts to apply for grants.” Part of the challenge with Sky High, Colen explained, has been “trying to think about how philanthropy has traditionally been done and proposing new models.”

That’s led Colen to his high-profile collaborations and drops like this one with Nike and KAWS, the artist Brian Donnelly. KAWS, Colen said, “understood what we were trying to do,” and has been a supporter of the project “since day one.” Their work together on this collection is inspired in part by what Colen sees as the amazing impact that Donnelly’s work has had worldwide. “Brian has been a trailblazer in terms of what an intersectional practice looks like for an artist and how far into popular culture one can go,” Colen said. “We really want our ideas to resonate at the level that his already have.”