A long-awaited raffle on Thursday for Nina Chanel Abney‘s Air Jordan 3 shoes did not go as planned after the website for it faced what the artist called an “unordinary malicious attack.”
Though better known in the art world for her paintings, some of which are now on view in a sprawling show at Jack Shainman Gallery’s School location in Kinderhook, New York, Abney has also produced sneakers that have gained a following.
In 2022 she did an entire collaboration with Nike x Air Jordan that included hoodies and T-shirts emblazoned with her signature typography. She also designed a set of Air Jordan 2 sneakers for it. High Snobiety called Abney’s Jordan attire a “collaboration for the books.”
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“My primary objective of the collection was to create something that spoke to a different demographic that maybe we don’t typically see represented in these spaces,” Abney told High Snobiety then. “I also wanted to insert art into everyday products, so people could enjoy it outside of a museum or gallery setting while bringing it into the athletic space to shake things up.”
The follow-up to those shoes, a pair of sneakers known as the Air Jordan 3, will officially go on sale later this month. They have been touted widely in the fashion press, with British GQ terming them the “sneaker drop of the summer.” The sneakers are expected to retail for $225, and will be available for purchase on June 20.
Ahead of their official on-sale date, Abney made available some pairs of these sneakers via raffle on Super Cool Studios’s website Thursday. But some social media users claimed that by the time they could access the website, they received a notice saying the shoes were already gone.
In a social media post on Thursday, Abney said the raffle website had experienced unexpected issues.
“We had an overwhelming amount of demand, however the platform was affected by an unordinary malicious attack,” she wrote. “The raffle is now closed. The team [is] working to ensure that the shoes get into hands of actual people. Winners will receive an email to checkout. Emails will start going out within an hour.”
She teased another opportunity for purchasing the shoes, due to take place June 20 via the SNKRS app.