Historically speaking, when Travis Scott drops a brand new shoe, he tends to test the waters with a single colourway. Even his hype-iest projects begin the same way: put one pair out there, let the sneakerverse descend into chaos, and see what happens. But just one week after Carlos Alcaraz took the wraps off the Travis Scott x Nike Zoom Vapor 12, he’s already pulled out another one.

The first colour combo was the clean ‘Pale Ivory’ finished with the ‘Cacao Wow’ details seen across Scott’s many ‘Mocha’ releases. This new one switches things into dark mode. From a distance, the entire upper looks black, but zoom right in and it seems to be a very deep brown – the sorta brown that only remembers it’s brown when the light hits it.

Most of the sneaker is decked out in that near-black shade, including the engineered mesh upper, laces, and reinforced panels around the toe. A big white backwards Swoosh shoots across the outside, with a much smaller regular Swoosh is tucked onto the inside. It’s a much sharper contrast compared to the first pair and, naturally, Alcaraz wore it with a matching black-and-white kit (also designed by Travis Scott, btw).

Under all of that, it’s still the Zoom Vapor 12: the Nike silhouette that Alcaraz plays in anyway. It has a heel Air Zoom unit, a firm midfoot plate, a supportive frame, and a herringbone outsole built for extra grippiness – pretty useful especially when you’re trying to hit something travelling at 130mph.

Patrick Smith/Getty Images