Like any other person born in Los Angeles in the nineties, Aleali May is obsessed with sneakers. Even though she wore a uniform to school, her closet was full of Nike Air Force sneakers and even though she was really passionate about fashion, she had little to no interest in what the pop divas of the moment were wearing, she would always anxiously wait for her uncle to buy her pairs and pairs of Jordan’s. It was very clear from the very beginning that Aleali was more attracted to masculine fashion, she always had that androgynous touch, as she mixed urban fashion with luxury brands, something like what her idols Aaliyah and Alicia Keys used to do. It was just after graduating from marketing, in Chicago, when she started to work at the RSVP Gallery – a concept store and gallery founded by Virgil Abloh and Don C – where she realised that she could end up working in fashion but maybe not strictly as a designer.
ALEALI MAY, THE SNEAKERHEAD THAT BECAME A DESIGNER FOR JORDAN
There are only just a few names that can be associated to the Jordan brand, in fact, if we think about it, we can come up with the names of Hiroshi Fujiwara, Virgil Abloh or the artist KAWS, who are quite well-known, at least, when we talk about the streetwear world. But since 2017 there’s another name that we can add to the list, and this is the case of the model, influencer and stylist Aleali May.
The RSVP Gallery completely changed to rules of the game. In that space, the worlds of art and fashion converged like never before. On the same day, you could see people like the artist Takashi Murakami, rapper Pharrell or employees of the Givenchy brand. That’s where she learned that the worlds of streetwear and luxury could not only coexist, but they could also mix together to such a degree that it was hard to even distinguish them, Virgil Abloh proves it more and more with each of his collections for Off-White and Louis Vuitton Men.
You can say that she’s an influencer, stylist or designer, but Aleali is all three things and much more. Thanks to the contacts she made working for the gallery, she started she began taking styling jobs for rappers like Lil Yachty or Kendrick Lamar, at the same time that she would upload pics of her outfits on Instagram, where she could wear a Chanel purse and a golden necklace with her name à la Carrie Bradshaw, at the same time that she wore XXL trousers, gold chains and Jordan sneakers. And it was precisely Jordan, the brand she had been loyal to from a young age, which she was able to collaborate with, becoming the second woman to ever receive their honour, after Vashtie Kola. After her Air Jordan I and Air Jordan I Court Lux that she dropped last year, in March of this year she released the Air Jordan VI Millennial Pink, which sold out in a matter of minutes, making it quite a feat which places her among the sneakerheads, as well as now designers, that are currently the most popular.
