DEVIN BOOKER'S NIKE BOOK 2 MIRRORS HIS OWN 1959 IMPALA

Nike Book 2 Pretty Penny mirrors a car Devin Booker actually owns, a 1959 Chevrolet Impala convertible parked in a Phoenix garage he calls The Library. Its metallic red bronze paint now covers a basketball shoe too, and the pair lands worldwide on SNKRS September 10. Nike and Chevrolet built the shoe's paint, tongue and badge work from photographs of the real car, not from a licensing agreement signed after the fact.

Devin Booker Calls His Garage The Library

Booker keeps a growing collection of vintage Chevrolets in a Phoenix space he nicknamed The Library, and the 1959 Impala convertible parked inside it is the one Nike matched first. It is the third Book 2 colorway this year built around a piece of Booker's own history, after a June release built around the only McDonald's in the world with turquoise arches instead of gold, a landmark near his hometown of Scottsdale, Arizona, and a March pair that traced back to the 1995 96 Kentucky Wildcats championship team, the program Booker played for before turning pro.

Both of those earlier pairs borrowed someone else's landmark or someone else's banner. The Impala collection is the first one built from an object Booker owns outright, sitting in a garage he can walk into any morning. Book 2 is Booker's second signature shoe with Nike, and the Phoenix Suns guard has now spent four colorways this year writing a version of his own biography onto it instead of just changing the color of the swoosh.

Metallic Red Bronze Comes Straight From the Paint Code

The Pretty Penny's upper runs in a metallic red bronze that Nike pulled directly from the paint code on Booker's 1959 Impala convertible. A raised tongue detail mirrors the shape of the car's hood ornament, and 59 markings reference the model year, a design formula Nike plans to repeat on three more colorways still parked in Booker's garage.

Sail, metallic silver and black round out the rest of the shoe, a palette pulled from photos of the Impala at car shows, not from a standard Book 2 colorway chart. Nike filed the pair under style code IO9841 900, a numbering scheme that will carry through pale pink, silver and dark brown versions tied to Booker's 1958, 1962 and 1963 Impalas, all scheduled for December.

August 15 Beat September 10 to Detroit

Nike opened SNKRS Pass reservations for Pretty Penny on August 14, with pickup the next day at Burn Rubber in Royal Oak, Michigan, ahead of Thursday's wider release instead of waiting for it. The stop lined up with the Woodward Dream Cruise, the annual classic car parade that runs through the Detroit suburbs every August and draws exactly the kind of Impala owners Booker is now selling shoes to.

Booker, born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, called the timing personal. "I've been a lifelong Chevy fan, and I truly love adding classic cars to my garage, The Library," he said in Chevrolet's announcement of the collection. "Bringing together my Michigan roots and my passion for Chevy makes this project really special." Michigan got the car meet and the sneaker in one weekend. Everyone else waits until the following month for the nationwide SNKRS drop at 155 dollars.

Chevy's Bet Looks Like Fashion's, in Reverse

Nike has confirmed three more Book 2 colorways for December, each matched to a different Impala year in Booker's collection, a pale pink build off his 1958, a silver pair off his 1962 and a dark brown pair off his 1963. Pretty Penny is only the opening entry in a project that treats a sneaker rollout like a car show program spread across a full year.

Fashion has run a version of this trick in reverse this year. Nike ran a similar personal history play this month with Amanda Anisimova's debut Kallmeyer tennis shoe, while Celine spent the same stretch cutting a 1982 Reebok Freestyle into lambskin, borrowing a shoe's history instead of a car's. Booker's version has an advantage neither of those pairs can claim, since the object it is copying sits in his own garage rather than in an archive he had to ask to borrow. At 155 dollars a pair, the Impala collection is a considerably cheaper way into Booker's garage than the four actual Chevrolets parked inside it.