Victor Solomon Gilds the Foamposite One in Gym Red

Black paisley over a red shell, gold chain laces and a $350 tag: Victor Solomon’s third Foamposite One for Nike is lined up to close out 2026.

Victor Solomon has spent most of 2026 dressing Nike classics like championship silverware, and his newest pair leans harder into color than anything in the run so far. Product images that circulated earlier this week show the Nike Air Foamposite One with its molded shell flooded in Gym Red, overprinted in black paisley and finished in gold, closer in spirit to a holiday ornament than a hoop shoe.

Signal. What happened: a third Air Foamposite One from Solomon’s “Trophies” series with Nike surfaced this week in Gym Red, and a Japan market release notice now places it at the end of 2026. Exact object: Victor Solomon x Nike Air Foamposite One “Gym Red,” style code IR2077-600, colorway Gym Red/Metallic Gold-Black. When and where: Holiday 2026 through Nike’s SNKRS app and select retailers at $350 in men’s sizing, with Japanese timing, yen pricing and stockists still unannounced. Source: Men’s Journal’s release rundown and the Japan market notice carry the details, while Nike has yet to post a launch page of its own. Why it matters: it is the first Trophies pair to leave the white and black bases that defined the February and July rounds, which turns a pair of All-Star capsules into an ongoing line.

The build follows the template Solomon set in February. Red leather lines the eyestay, collar and pull tabs, a miniature gold Swoosh sits by the toe, and his signature runs in gold across the heel, the spot where Penny Hardaway’s 1Cent logo lived on the 1997 original. The laces are gold chain rather than cord, which nudges the pair closer to display piece than daily rotation. Underneath, a semi-translucent red outsole carries herringbone traction, with the carbon fiber shank left exposed at the midfoot, a holdover from the model’s performance roots.

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Trophies began as a hometown project. Solomon, who is based in Los Angeles, launched three white and gold pairs, an Air Force 1 Low, an Air Max 90 and the Foamposite One, at Shoe Palace on Melrose Avenue on February 13, during NBA All-Star Weekend in the city. Each shoe mapped onto a different corner of Los Angeles: the Air Force 1 nodded to the Sunset Strip, the Air Max 90 to the Diamond District, and the Foamposite, nicknamed “Westside Beaches,” to the coastline, its paisley rolling across the shell like surf.

The concept flipped to black over the summer. On July 10, black and gold versions of all three silhouettes dropped exclusively at Shoe Palace inside The Venetian’s Grand Canal Shoppes in Las Vegas, ahead of WNBA All-Star Weekend in Chicago, before a wider release on SNKRS on July 22. That black Foamposite, IR2077-001, reversed the paisley color blocking of the white original and held the same $350 price. Secondary-market listings for February’s white Foamposite have since climbed past $800.

Gym Red is the first pair to step outside that black and white logic, and nothing yet ties it to a specific event the way the two All-Star weekends anchored the earlier rounds.

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Solomon arrived at sneakers by way of glass. Raised in Boston, he moved to San Francisco to pursue film, apprenticed under local stained glass artisans and in 2015 posted a stained glass backboard online under the hashtag that became his studio’s name, Literally Balling. The project grew into backboards fitted with 24 karat gold-plated rims, crystal-woven nets and ceramic basketballs cracked and rejoined with Kintsugi gold, work since shown in New York, Los Angeles, Paris and Shanghai.

The basketball establishment followed. In 2022 the NBA introduced a redesigned slate of All-Star trophies created in partnership with Solomon, led by the Kobe Bryant Trophy for All-Star Game MVP. For the league’s first in-season tournament in 2023, he worked with Tiffany & Co. on the MVP trophy and designed both the champions’ medals and the black crystal basketballs handed to the All-Tournament Team. A year later he designed the full set of team courts for the 2024 NBA Cup. The Trophies sneakers borrow directly from that black and gold vocabulary, swapping crystal and silver for leather and chain.

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The Air Foamposite One makes an unusual canvas for an artist. Designer Eric Avar and Nike’s Advanced Product Engineering group spent three to four years developing its molded upper, and Penny Hardaway claimed the shoe after spotting an early sample during a product meeting. It reached shelves in 1997 at $180, a steep price for the time, though Mike Bibby wore it on court first, during Arizona’s run to the 1997 NCAA title.

That one-piece shell is exactly what makes the model a natural surface for Solomon. He leaves the tooling, the shank and the sil untouched and works entirely on the skin, the same move he makes with a stained glass backboard: keep the functional object recognizable, then dress it in materials it was never meant to wear. Gym Red simply gives that surface more volume than the first two rounds allowed.

In Japan, the release notice lists the Gym Red pair for the end of 2026 with no date, price or retailer list attached, leaving the North American Holiday window as the firmest timing on record.