Custom Sneaker: From Art to Science?
From Mod Mania
- by Glen Tay Cheung Ning s3280823
In the world of being individualistic, there seems to be a never-ending desire to stand out. To feed this ego well, sneaker fans and shoe companies have created avenues for high degrees of personalisation through the customisation of one’s sneakers. There was a time when sneaker customization was ruled by artists, and for the hip and trendy amongst us, a heavily worn pair of Converse All Stars would be "custom" enough. Now, however, customisation is now as popular as queuing up for BAPEs.
Sneaker Culture
Figure 1. No room for growing collection.
The origins can be traced to the sneakerhead. A sneakerhead is person who owns multiple pairs of shoes as a form of collection and fashion. Usually, their collections consist of rare, vintage, and collectable sneakers from classic Chuck Taylor's to custom Nikes. Their love for sneakers is as passionate as a Star Wars fan who would dream to live at the George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch. The boom of signature basketball shoes in the late 1980s provided the sheer variety necessary for a collecting subculture, while the Hip-Hop / Break-dancing (Bboy) movement gave the sneakers their street value as status symbols.
More often than not, Sneakerheads start out by buying shoes that are general releases, or ones they thought were interesting. Some started by obtaining the pair of shoes based on nostalgia, where they couldn’t have afforded that one sneaker, at that time. If their interests persist, they have a potentially highly expensive hobby on their hands. It ultimately leads to the holy grail of sneaker culture i.e. custom sneakers, highly limited and/or hand crafted pair of sneakers.
Figure 2. Example of Customised Sneakers
Personalizing Sneakers
While the sneaker may provide a narrow and small area of canvas, it seems sufficient for the artists and urban youth to exercise full play of their imagination without being too excessively showy. A fanatical worldwide coalition of basketball players, graffiti artists, break-dancers, rappers, hip-hoppers, dee-jays,skateboarders, and the likes, spanning from the “Baby-Boomers” to the “Gen-Y”, have devoted themselves to the stylistic possibilities of these shoes by making cults of certain models, colouring and customising them and devising elaborate lacing patterns.
Talented individuals have created blogs or websites that invite their peers/customers to professionally personalise their sneakers. There are many artists out there who make their own style of custom sneakers to sell on the web. The most famous designers of custom sneakers are SBTG, Methaphibian and Jor l.
In this experience, there is normally a one-to-one relationship that provides a better understanding of their customer, as to how their sneaker is to be personalised. Ideas are more often than not, inspired from sports, film, music, gaming to world events. Competitions are regularly held, allowing the public to vote via the internet, highlighting the individual’s desire to have that ‘one’ sneaker.
To keep track on the pulse of custom sneakers, one can visit there are countless forums and blogs such as nicekicks.com and kenlu.net. The world’s largest touring sneaker and street-based art show called “Sneaker Pimps”, is evidence of this strong movement. With more than 62 cities around the globe across countries like US, Australia, Dubai, South Africa, Russia and Canada have played host to this sneaker exhibit, making it the world’s largest cultural street-art lifestyle showcase. It showcases more than 1,000 pairs of rare, limited-edition, vintage, celebrity-signed, artists-collaborated sneakers and a huge collection of sneaker-inspired artwork, fashion and photography.
Figure 3. Sneaker Pimps poster
There is Niketalk.com, an independent forum founded by a bunch of sneaker fanatics swap news, gossip and opinions about Nike products. Not associated with Nike itself, though people at the company read it, it has more than 35,000 registered users.
There are also niche magazines such as Sole and Sneaker Freaker, a bi-annual Aussie independent magazine dedicated to coverage of topics relating to sneakers.
Commercialised personalisation
Sneaker customization sure isn't new, but over the last year it has come to commercial prominence through various sneaker boutiques selling various artists efforts. This has been a natural progression for these stores who must stay ahead of their competitiors by offering something different - a true limited edition.
Brand producers of sneakers have discovered the appeal of exclusivity and have successfully tapped into the Do-It-Yourself and design-savvy generation through their online custom-made service, creating a culture of ‘commercial DIY’.
Adidas, through its’ “Adicolor” line, created in the 1980s, was the forerunner in this personalisation race. The package contained a pair of entirely white adidas shoes, and a set of specially produced waterproof paint tubes, brushes and five pair of shoelaces. However, it was not well-conceived by the then-generation, who had little experience with design or art. It was later re-introduced in 1998, for the skateboarding and basketball community. It was considered to possess a more unique sense of individuality than that of the recent “NikeiD” concept.
Puma introduced the “Puma Mongolian Shoe BBQ”, which was a big hit in Japan. The concept of the Mongolian cuisine which was cooked up the way Genghis Khan would have liked them to be. It not only had a interactive web platform that allowed you to pick pre-cut materials, and cook them up in a tasteful version of the Puma RS-100, it has also launched a shop in Japan’s trendy Harajuku district that houses similar activity of customers laying out actual parts of the shoe for them to be sewn in and delivered to them.
Figure 4. NikeiD website
This in-store customisation experience is much more visceral and immediate than the online experience.
Nike, who formed “NikeiD concept”, in the 21st century, fully utilised the infinite reach of the internet, allowing any individual, to literally built-to-order with options like colour picks, soles, laces, base to personalised labelling. After submitting your requirements to the general headquarters, your built-to-order sneaker is shipped to you within four weeks.
To bring a higher level of exclusivity and personalisation, Nike created a “NikeiD Lab” in 2007, hand-picking designers and influencers to create their very own one-of-a-kind sneakers. Each shoe then reflects the style of a particular design talent, making it highly distinctive while increasing their collectible value.
Vans has also dived into this arena by running a Vans Shoe Custom Culture Competition, a nationwide art & design talent contest for high school art classes utilizing Vans sneakers as the canvas for their creative talents.
Conclusion
With mass customisation offered by big brand companies, it will fuel this movement within sneaker culture and beyond. Customisation brings with it a democratisation of design and a form of cultural re-mixing in which one brand’s innovation is based on another’s idea but is it really personalization in its purest form especially when brands set up parameters of the customization?
References
Arriero, E (2010), Q&A with Jemayne Lavar King: Expert explains sneaker culture, http://www.enquirerjournal.com/view/full_story/4935223/article-Q-A-with-Jemayne-Lavar-King--Expert-explains-sneaker-culture .
Garcia, R 2003, Where’d You Get Those?, Testify Books, New York.
Heard, N 2003, Sneakers, Carlton Books Ltd, London.
Luo LV & Zhang HG 2007, Sneakers, Southbank Publishing, London.
Unorthodox Styles 2005, Sneakers The Complete Collectors’ Guide - With over 550 colour illustrations, Thames & Hudson Ltd, London.
kenlu.net
nicekicks.com
nikebasketball.com
Image references :
1.http://www.sneakerobsession.com/17554/a-sneakerheads-closet/ 2.http://kalantiaw.deviantart.com/art/custom-sneakers-69412555 3.http://n-sb.org/index.php/tag/dunkxchange/page/2/ 4.http://nikeid.nike.com/nikeid/index.jsp
