Clean Custom Air Jordan 11 Made with Hair Dye

Jordan 11 Black Cat Customs

Welcome back to another episode of Customs with Vick.

Today Vick Almighty is going to be taking a shoe that no one wanted and turn it into something that sneakerheads everywhere are “dyeing” to have. 

This pair of Air Jordan 11s is going to be a totally different shoe by the time Vick is through with them. 

Let’s get started. 

A Hairy Situation

For this custom, we’re going to try and blackout the entire shoe…a Blackcat Jordan 11 if you will. So for starters, we’ve definitely got to get rid of that zebra print. 

Not so fast…

Vick found out pretty quickly that the task of dyeing the hair on the upper of this pair is going to be a lot more challenging than he first thought. His first three methods proved unsuccessful. 

With nowhere left to turn, and the fate of this custom Jordan 11 on the line, Vick turned to his girlfriend for some advice. Naturally, his girlfriend had an idea that completely changed this custom around: use hair dye. 

This makes total sense, considering that we’re working with hair on this shoe, not our typical leather, suede, nubuck, or mesh. 

But once again, even with following his girlfriend's advice, Vick failed to really dye the material. 

Instead of pouting, Vick swallowed his pride and let his girlfriend take over. Her knowledge and expertise as a hair stylist was exactly what this project needed. And after just 30 minutes of work, Vick’s girlfriend was able to successfully dye the shoe. 

For those of you at home that want to take on a similar project, here’s how she did it. First she mixed the black hair dye with the developer. Then she applied it in thick globs all around the hair. After a 30 minute cure, she washed it with shampoo and water, just like normal hair. 

The upper is looking jet black, shoutout to Vick’s girlfriend for the save! Now we can move on to the rest of the shoe.

Finishing Touches

Vick used flat black paint to black out the Jordan logo on the tongue, and the ‘23’ logo on the heel tab. Then he used the same flat black paint to cover the midsole. One thing to note here is that the Jordan 11 is prone to midsole paint cracking, so it’s a good idea to finish your paint job with a matte finisher to help preserve and protect it. 

Another small detail Vick added was a custom Black Cat logo on the insoles. For this, he printed a vinyl sticker and simply used an iron to adhere it to the insole. 

After finishing the midsoles, Vick almost forgot to work on the carbon fiber plate. Luckily he remembered, and used some black sole dye to darken the tint of the carbon fiber. 

Now all that’s left is to lace these bad boys up. 

The Final Product

Things obviously got off to a rocky start, but man did these turn out clean.

You can’t tell me that if Jordan Brand released this pair instead of the original Animal Instinct Jordan 11s that you wouldn’t prefer them. These are much better, and much more wearable. 

Animal print can be hard to pull off, but all black never goes out of style. 

Shoutout to Vick for once again killing another custom. Let us know down below if you’re rocking with this custom Black Cat Jordan 11. 

And as always, click on over to Youtube to watch more of Vick’s crazy custom ideas come to life.