A Look Back At A$AP Rocky X Under Armour Four Years Later
A retrospective look at UA and Rocky's partnership.
In September 2018, A$AP Rocky and UA released their collaborative shoe, the SRLo (Skate, Rave, Lo).
The shoe itself which was pretty much a clone of the Osiris D3 was built with quality much higher than what is usually seen from UA. It came in two different colorways, triple black and a white/blue/black colorway which was my favorite of the two. There also were special colorways of each shoe which had silver flames.
Even though I was not deep into skate culture or rave culture at all, and I stayed far away from anything made by Osiris, I was still excited that UA was trying something new. I was lucky enough to track down both pairs a few years after release for retail price as this model has pretty much been lost with time.
I can attribute a lot of my excitement to an early photo of Rocky and the UA team where a different shoe was previewed. That shoe ended up being the UA Forge 96 which held some popularity for a time but also seems to be forgotten. But at first the internet thought that was Rocky’s signature shoe.
And even though Rocky’s shoe ended up being something a world away from the Forge 96, I was happy to see the different directions that UA was attempting to go to and was happy to purchase multiple pairs of the Forges and eventually get both colorways of the SRLos.
In the 4 years since then UA has parted ways with Rocky and, to me at least, lost a lot of that creative momentum.
The collab stirred a lot of controversy for two reasons. First, Rocky seemed to not have much desire to be in UA shoes, even his own. Complex even named him possibly “the Worst Sneaker Endorser”. Rocky and UA held a release party in NYC and Rocky did a small amount of press for the shoe but that was about it. He would go on to wear anything he wanted, which is a good freedom I believe creatives should have but he pretty much dropped the shoe immediately and the UA partnership seemed to end soon after.
The second reason was something that started with good intent but ended up biting Rocky and UA in the end. Rocky wanted to bring Dave Mayhew on for the project since the Osiris D3 was Dave’s signature shoe. But in doing this a lot of the skate community was outraged as Dave did not actually design the shoe and cult skate fans felt Rocky should have done more research. The designers of the D3, Brian Reed, who is also a co-founder of Osiris was outraged by Rocky and UA, and was feature in multiple press outlets voicing his frustration.
Overall I think the Rocky collab was a step in the right direction for Under Armour and I hope they took away important lessons from the partnership so they can create lasting ones in the future. They have not since given an artist a signature shoe deal but have worked with other artists such as Baltimore’s own Devin Allen who has worked with UA for years and now has colorways of multiple UA models. Including a variation of the Forge 96 called the Forge RC.
Sources:
https://sneakernews.com/2018/01/15/asap-rocky-under-armour-sportswear-shoe/
https://about.underarmour.com/news/2018/09/under-armour-and-aap-rocky-introduce-srlo-sneaker-collab
https://www.complex.com/sneakers/2019/02/asap-rocky-might-be-the-worst-sneaker-endorser
https://stockx.com/under-armour-asap-rocky-srlo-black-blue
https://stockx.com/under-armour-asap-rocky-srlo-black
https://stockx.com/osiris-d3-2001-triple-black
https://www.gq.com/story/asap-rocky-under-armour-sneaker-exclusive