Whenever the team at Jordan Brand begins working on a new game shoe, they start with Michael Jordan himself. That's because the games shoes are the spine of the company—reaching all the way back to the Jordan 1 and informing everything else under the Jordan umbrella. They are the front guard: displaying the best technological and design advancements while setting a tone for the brand's overarching philosophy.

It all started with Michael Jordan's basketball career, sure. But now Jordan Brand is a force in and of itself, setting forth a point of view that has been honed over the course of 30 years at the forefront of sneaker culture.

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Michael Jordan in the original

For the Jordan 31, the conversation started when Michael called the sneaker design team to his annual summer basketball camp in Santa Barbara. He gave them an edict: Go back and look at the three decades of product that Jordan Brand had created. Then build off that history to create something fresh.

Tate Keubris, the lead designer for the 31 (and the 18 and 19), said, "Well, let's start at the very beginning." So that's what they did. They looked back to that first crucial sneaker: the Air Jordan 1.

The One was created 31 years ago through a series of events that now seem like they were destined to occur (even though they almost didn't spell success at the time). Since that release in 1985, the style has become one of the most iconic sneakers in history—or the unrivaled champion, depending on whom you ask.

It's been worn through the NBA finals, on the runway, and even gifted to President Obama.

"The One was where it all began for Michael and Jordan Brand; the One kind of created sneaker culture, basically," Keubris explains. So that's where the team started—but they knew they would have to go a whole lot further than just rehashing a classic.

"Michael got us in at a good starting point, but I think we never wanted to get stuck just redefining the One," says Keubris. "I didn't want people to see this and be like, 'Oh, they just designed a modern One.' We wanted to take some of those cues, and add more performance, and a few stories from there. We want this to stand on its own as a new modern icon for Jordan."

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One of the main reasons that Michael Jordan didn't initially want to work with Nike back in the '80s was because he thought Nike's soles were too thick. He couldn't feel the court below him when he was wearing the brand's shoes, and he needed that for his game. So when Peter Moore designed the first Air Jordan he listened, giving Jordan the thin rubber sole he was asking for.

It was impressive technology back then, but in the intervening years Nike has grown. There's more tech, and it's better.

"Honestly I don't know how Michael played and dunked [in the Air Jordan 1]," Keubris says about that 31-year-old solid rubber sole. "God, that's crazy."

For the 31, the Jordan Brand designers maintained the basic silhouette, but were able to fill that shape with whatever technology they wanted. They were limited only by their imaginations.

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From start to finish the whole process took 18 months. Step one? Some paper and pencils. "We spend a couple months just sketching, going through thousands, thousands of little scribbles and sketches, until we find something that we feel good about and we'll show marketing, we'll show Michael, and then start mocking things up."

From there, it's time to explore tooling and shapes, materials and hardware, colors and graphics. The Flyweave upper had to be meticulously designed in Italy with the help of complex machinery. They had to find the right vegan leather that was thin enough for a game shoe but still had a buttery feel.

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They sent all their digital files and tangible pieces under a codename to discourage leaks ("Raptor" after one of the fastest birds in the world). They had to get the fading Swoosh design past the legal department and CEO Mark Parker's personal hesitance. And by the end of that process, they had created something they hoped would land near Michael's original vision.

"When you go to present to him you're a little bit nervous at first, especially when you're showing him rough mock-ups or sketches," Keubris explains. "But when I pulled out the first mock-up on this one you could tell he could see it and he kind of had this smile. It was a relief. And then we drank some tequila—I forget the brand but it's like a thousand something dollars. It's really good. You kind of have to drink to get through this process."

The main question now is if people will wear the 31 in ways that game shoes haven't been worn as of late. Howard "H" White has been with Jordan since the very beginning, and now acts at the VP of the brand. He sees all the history this shoe holds—and the future it represents.

"It's enough of the old mingled with the new to push forward," says H. "How amazing [to look back now at] what MJ has stood for for thirty years? I mean, how amazing?"