Here are a pair of OG Nike BWs, or classics. I’m not sure if they’re classics or BWs - I use a boolean search for both just to cover my bases, which is hard because it yields a lot of SBs. I am not sure if the box lists them as Air Max Classics or Air BW’s, but one is the other. The model was released in 1992, and purple/black, most famous colorway, is best remembered from a Boyz II Men photo shoot from that year.

This is one Nike that holds up well. For every wool dunk, multicolored Air Max 93 or Flight 89 with 360 Air there’s a subtler Nike that commands enduring appreciation*.

I picked up a pair of these in Brown, Black and Tan in 2002 at a duty free shop in Europe. I don’t know what happened to them, and if it was my preferred size I’d still be losing sleep over it. In the right colors, the shoe can make you look like you actually are from Europe. Stay away from the awful new retros and go with the original runner colors or anything metallic:

*There was a guy on campus way back who’d always rock the 2000 gold/silver Euro versions of these, with skintight stonewash 501s and a sleeveless Black Album era Metallica shirt. More than one co-ed was heard to have been crushing on him in the library. Despite the shoes he still looked like a drifter. Whatever.