DJ Khaled got the 700 V3 straight off Ye’s feet, three months early

Ye and DJ Khaled met on a private airfield in Atlanta after one of Ye’s Sunday Services, Highsnobiety reported, and Khaled left in the shoes Ye had been wearing. He posted the video on 15 Sep 2019. Ivan Berrios photographed the two of them on the tarmac. Ye’s in a white tee and grey sweats, and on his feet there’s a white shoe with a black bootie inside a moulded cage.

Complex pointed out that nobody, athletes included, had repped Jordan Brand harder than Khaled in recent years. Now he was holding a Yeezy that hadn’t released, and Yeezy Mafia said it was the 700 V3. The name was a year old by then. The shoe had changed completely.

August 2018: the first 700 V3

On 22 Aug 2018 Ye posted a photo on Twitter and credited the designer by name.

“700 V3 Mark Miner and the team killed it”

Ye, on Twitter

Miner was at adidas’s Brooklyn Creator Farm, and the shoe had shown up a month earlier in Ye’s sketches of 2019 product. It didn’t lose the chunky 700 shape: a big white midsole with tonal white and grey overlays. Complex saw a smooth sole where the 700’s was layered, synthetics in place of suede and leather, and a new pull tab on the heel.

July 2019: a slimmer shoe with a cage

That isn’t the shoe Khaled got. In July 2019, fresh off Ye’s Forbes cover story, Sneaker Freaker caught him in something new. It had a bootie, moulded overlays and a slimmer sole with more in common with a 350 than a 700. Complex later said it was the same design Khaled walked off with. Hypebeast, citing Yeezy Mafia, called it an updated 700 V3, with ideas from the Yeezy basketball shoe and a cage like the Foam Runner’s lattice.

On 24 Oct 2019 Ye wore it to Fashion Group International’s Night of Stars in New York, and Getty’s Taylor Hill photographed his shoes on the red carpet.

December 2019: Azael, and it glows

It released as the 700 V3 “Azael” on 23 Dec 2019, through the adidas Yeezy webstore in North America and Europe. There’s no Boost in it. It’s an EVA midsole in a PU shell, and the RPU cage glows in the dark, with a black neoprene sock liner inside.

Ye’s first 700 V3 photo went up 16 months before Azael, and it showed a different shoe. The one that released, Khaled had been wearing since September.