Aminé’s First Made in USA New Balance Is a Sixth-Grade Camp Necklace in Sneaker Form

Aminé kept his camp necklace for years, and it has now become a New Balance sneaker. The Portland rapper’s 992 “Outdoor School,” announced Sept. 11, is his first Made in USA colorway and a tribute to the week-long science camp that Oregon sixth graders attend, Hypebeast reports. His was the MESD Outdoor School at Milk Creek.

The shoe is earthy. The upper is reddish brown, built from mesh, suede and glossy patent leather overlays, with Club Banana logos on the tongues, per Hypebeast. Sneaker Freaker notes his own logo on the heel, deliberately mismatched outsole colors and nature graphics on the insoles that reference the Outdoor School curriculum.

The extras do the storytelling. Each pair comes with a wooden “wood cookie” hangtag stamped “Horizon Cabin,” plus charms in the shapes of a frog, a compass, a whistle, a slug and a fish, so owners can decorate it the way campers did. The box is designed to look like a fishing tackle box, Hypebeast adds. Inside, Sneaker Freaker says, the tissue paper carries a scrawled note from Aminé explaining where it all came from.

I’m so happy I’ve kept mine till this day because I don’t think this special collaboration with New Balance would have ever happened if I didn’t see it still hanging on my bedroom door 3 years ago when I was home for Christmas.

Aminé, in the note printed on the tissue paper, Sneaker Freaker

In the same note he described the camp as the place where everyone got a wood cookie to write their name on and decorate with charms, and where phones were taken away, which he labeled “very Oregonian.” At the time it was basically a name tag. Now, he wrote, it represents “so much nostalgia and memories of home.”

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It also says something about how far his New Balance run has come. Aminé was named a partner in 2022, Sneaker Freaker recounts, and has since put out the 610 “The Mooz,” an orange-and-blue 740 and two takes on the ABZORB 2000. The 992 moves him into the brand’s premium Made in USA line, and the release was scheduled for Oct. 2.

He ended the note the only way a camp counselor would: “Now go and personalize your wood cookie!!!!!!!!!!”

Added to the High Grailed archive on October 11, 2026.