This fall, L.A.-based boutique Union teamed up with Jordan Brand to put out one of the year's most covetable collaborations. Union's Chris Gibbs filtered classics like the Air Jordan 1 and a lineup of apparel through a vintage lens, mashing up colorways and washing down garments to give the entire collection a distinctive look and feel. Naturally, fans were all over it.

So when it came time to actually get the merchandise into customers' hands, Gibbs and company didn't want to make do with a traditional selling situation. Instead, they created a one-of-a-kind experience, building a giant mirrored box from scratch and giving shoppers a little something extra while they snagged some new gear.

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We caught up with Gibbs to talk about the collection—and take an exclusive look the creation of the Union x Jordan retail space in a new video. Here's how it all went down.

Gibbs knew he wanted to focus on the vintage vibe from the start.

My initial attachment to the Jordan brand started during my youth in the '90s. So when the opportunity came to work with them, my thoughts went directly to the emotional connection that I had with the brand. In collaborations, I always like to try and think about how two parties can bring different ideas together to make a new idea. Here, Union represents streetwear and Jordan represents sports, and to me the perfect place for these to entities to meet was through the vintage lens. I asked myself, "What would I want to wear from Jordan?" And I thought how dope it would be if I found some cool perfectly patinated tees and sweats from the '90s... I'd be pretty psyched!

Watch How It All Came Together
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Choosing the colorways was the toughest part of the project.

The original concept I pitched to the Jordan team was called "chopped and screwed," based off a particular sound from Houston where they slow the music down ("screwed") and then cut it up and interchange parts ("chopped"). I wanted to take the top and bottom of two different shoes and mix them. I wanted there to be a stark difference between the two halves, something almost ugly—one of my coworker calls it "gross." So we tried to pick four original shoe colors that don't play well together and mash them up.

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For the colorways, it was actually very difficult to choose them at first. First off, it's important to note that this capsule always started with the apparel first. When looking at Jordan through a vintage filter, we, and many others, naturally pivot to the early '90s Chicago Bulls stuff. The Bulls' colorways are black, red and white, which for the clothing was fine. But once we got to the shoes it became problematic because those colors have been done to death. We were actually stewing over this for quite some time, the Jordan design team and myself, as they really wanted to push things away from that. I did a little research and dug up some old royal blue AJ1s from back in the day and asked the team where they came from. They told me that they had made a pair for Michael cause blue was his favorite color. From there, we just zeroed in on the blue colorway both for the shoes and apparel.

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The "Chains" tee is his personal favorite piece.

Well, I love it all, but the standout piece to me is the T-shirt we have internally been calling "Chains." It's taken from an image of Michael Jordan at the Gatorade Dunk contest, where he's in mid air and his gold chains are flying in the wind. We kind of did a "bust" from that image and then discharge-printed it on an inside out T-shirt. It looks as authentically vintage as it gets.

Streetwear design is different than traditional fashion design—and this collection comes from a streetwear mindset.

I think these days, all the old fashion rules have gone out the window. People are totally free to dress the way they want and express themselves without limitations—and designers and brands know this. You end up getting these very pluralistic fashion looks. I know for our store, we buy in a kind of fragmented way. Now, we buy pieces more likely to fit in a mosaic then a traditional look. Sneakers can be worn with everything, and are now made just as commonly—if not more—for fashion as for their utilitarian uses, which was historically their main existence and purpose in marketplace.

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I honestly don't feel like this collab is different [than the rest of the marketplace]—it's a streetwear thing for sure in that we gave the people what they wanted. A lot of designers, especially traditional designers, which I am not, imagine a look, a world, a vision, and design product to that vision. Whereas I think the streetwear designer surveys the market, sees what people want or what is missing, and tries to fill that void. Being that my foundation is in retail, this is what we do, and I guess I approached this collab from that sensibility.