AWAKE NY COUNTS DOWN TO ITS SECOND PINK AIR JORDAN 6

Bubblegum pink leather turned the Air Jordan 5 into one of 2025's hardest sneakers to actually own. Awake NY built the colorway as a direct callback to the 1990 Air Jordan 5 Fire Red, swapping the red for a saturated pink over grey tongues, capped the run at 7,000 pairs, and moved every one through an EQL raffle. Twelve months later the same pink returned to Awake NY's Instagram on August 13, tagged #bubblegum6s, with a caption that promised nothing more than "see you in a week."

This is not a new color story. It is the second half of a two shoe rollout Angelo Baque started with Jordan Brand last summer, and the seven day countdown lines up with the release date sneaker retailers have already listed for the follow up shoe.

Angelo Baque Already Ran This Playbook Once

Awake NY's founder built the Air Jordan 5 Bubblegum Pink as a tribute to the 1990 Fire Red colorway, rebuilding the upper netting around the brand's block A logo and capping the run at exactly 7,000 pairs. Both that shoe and its Racer Blue companion moved through an EQL online raffle on August 17, 2025, with a second, in store only raffle for the pink pair the next day.

Pairs were gone within hours of the raffle closing, the kind of speed that tells a label the color earned its own following separate from the Jordan name on the box. The August 13 post uses the identical pink and the identical countdown structure, which is why #bubblegum6s reads less like a new idea and more like a receipt Baque is cashing a second time.

Four Shades Of Pink Cover One High Top

The Air Jordan 6 Playful Pink carries the internal code IQ5706 600 and spreads four distinct pink tones across a single upper, a soft pink through the toe, tongue and side panels, and a brighter pink at the heel, collar and rear overlays. Infrared 23 accents run through the lace lock, heel branding and midsole, and Awake NY's block A logo sits on the midfoot cage, the same placement the brand has used on every Jordan collaboration since the partnership began.

It releases August 29, 2026, priced at $230, seven days out from the caption, and drops alongside a Midnight Navy pair built on blue suede with red contrast stitching that follows about a month later in September. Two colorways from one silhouette, staggered five weeks apart, is a release cadence built to keep the brand's name on SNKRS through the entire fall.

Forget The Countdown. Look At What Concepts Just Did.

Awake NY placed its Summer '26 capsule at Concepts on August 12, one day before the bubblegum teaser posted, marking the boutique's 30th year in business. Two placements landing a day apart is not an accident for a label that treats every retail drop as its own press cycle; Baque has spent fourteen years building Awake NY on exactly that kind of sequencing, first at Supreme as brand director, then on his own.

The Concepts capsule and the AJ6 teaser share nothing in product terms, no overlapping pieces, no shared graphic. What they share is timing, and timing is the actual product Awake NY sells between drops.

Eight Cities, One Contest, One Mentor Named Baque

Eight cities ran Jordan Design Studio workshops this cycle, and Baque mentored the New York cohort of the program, the contest reinterpreting the $185 Air Jordan 1 High OG Love Letter for one designer's shot at the brand's permanent record. He did that while his own label pushed its second pink Jordan toward shelves in the same season.

That double role, mentor to newcomers and signature collaborator at once, is not something Nike hands to a label without a track record. Awake NY has one, and the Jordan Design Studio credit is the proof that Jordan Brand keeps calling Baque back for more than his own shoe wall.

The Pink Sells The Shoe. Futura Laboratories Sells The Week.

The August 13 post also tags futuralaboratories, the design studio the graffiti artist Futura founded in Brooklyn in 1997 and now runs as a partner brand to Nike, Off White, Beats By Dre, Dr Martens and Crocs. The same tag ran alone under a solo bubblegum emoji caption on July 24, which means the studio has been attached to this color story for close to three weeks before anyone confirmed a shoe was coming.

Awake NY's other August thread runs through soccer, not sneakers alone. The brand hosted the preview for Kids of Immigrants' Nike T90 Mule in its own store in May, ahead of the World Cup, the same store now counting down to a shoe of its own. Buy the AJ6 Playful Pink at $230 if the AJ5 Bubblegum sold out on you twice already; the block A logo and the four tone upper earn the price on construction alone, and August 29 is close enough that the wait is basically over.