I know I have been out of the works for a few weeks. I still have a few things bouncing around my head. Someone a few weeks back said I was a nike lover. Totally weird comment right. But it's been in my head for weeks. What does that mean? Why can't I admire Nike? They do so many things in so many different categories and everything they do they do so well. Anyway, why can't you admire the giant?
Who are these guys?
Tinker Hatfield has worked with Michael Jordan and led design teams that created thirteen different versions of the Air Jordan basketball shoe. Nike's headquarters looks like a college campus. The buildings, clustered around a lake, are named after famous athletes. We met Tinker on the ground floor of the Mia Hamm building, where he works in a place aptly called the "innovation kitchen." This is where special products, like Air Jordans, are cooked up. Tinker's road was a great example of how different parts of one's life can come together in unanticipated ways. In his case, a childhood love of sports meshed with architecture.
Courtesy of USA Today.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Air Jordan IV's
Air Jordan Friday's
Jordan IV.
Air Jordan 4 (IV)
The Air Jordan IV (4) was released in 1989. Michael kept on playing in a confident and dominating way and won numerous honors and awards.
The design, by Mr. Hatfield, wasn’t as revolutionary as the previous designs and kept a lot of the feeling from the third model. The Air Jordan shoes had started to get major popularity by now and sold out every here and there.
BooYah!
Monday, November 9, 2009
Timbo's
So Dope. Every Hip Hop star has dropped the name of these boots into their beats atleast one time.
Word. JLew Out!
Friday, November 6, 2009
Dr.Martens Airwair Shoes
Since we are finishing the week up of Authentic Original I figured I would finish off with a great. Dr. Martens. I had my first pair in high school. They were 10 eyes and brown. Those shoes went through thick and thin with me and many o’ night’s clod hopping through the town of Damascus where I grew up. At that time in my life they seemed indestructible but they made me who I was. They were part of my identity that gave me character and stability. I think this is when I first began my love of shoes. How crazy that a pair of boots would do that. Up until that point of my life I had always worn a pair of vans. Either Navy or Black every day of the week, I probably went through 100’s of pairs. This time I stepped out on a limb and decided to make a fashion statement with a pair of boots and my mom’s money. Dr. Martens.
Here is a photo of a classic. Typically in the boot world with laces they talk about the height of a boot by the number of eyelets that the laces go through. These boots in the photo are 10 eyes in one of the original colors. If you also notice the made in England tag. In recent years Dr.Martens took their production from England to China. It was sad to see that happen but companies have to make good margins to stay in business. However, there are still a few style made in England.
Here is a quick history on the brand. Courtesy of the brand.
When the Dr. Martens boot first catapulted from a working-class essential to a counter-cultural icon back in the 1960s, the world was pre-internet, pre-MTV, pre-CD, pre-mp3s, pre-mobile phones… hey, they’d only just invented the teenager. In the years before the boot’s birthday, 1st April, 1960, kids just looked like tribute acts to their parents, younger but the same. Rebellion was only just on the agenda for some - for most kids of the day, starved of music, fashion, art and choice, it was not even an option.
But then an unlikely union of two kindred spirits in distinctly different countries ignited a phenomenon.
In Munich, Germany, Dr Klaus Maertens had a garage full of inventions, including a shoe sole almost literally made of air; in Northampton, England, the Griggs family had a history of making quality footwear and their heads were full of ideas. They met, like a classic band audition, through an advert in the classified pages of a magazine. A marriage was born, an icon conceived of innovation and self-expression.
Together they took risks.
They jointly created a boot that defined comfort but was practical, hard-wearing and a design classic. At first, like some viral infection, the so-called 1460 stooped near to the ground, kept a low profile, a quiet revolution.
But then something incredible started to happen.
The postmen, factory workers and transport unions who had initially bought the boot by the thousand, were joined by rejects, outcasts and rebels from the fringes of society.
At first, it was the working-classes; before long it was the masses.
Skinheads were the first subculture to adopt the boot in the early 1960s, spilling out of the East End of London, then across Britain and the world; initially non-racist and obsessive about their fashion, by the time the skinhead movement was corrupted with elements of right-wing extremism, Dr Martens had already morphed into a torchbearer for a brave new world.
The late 1960s and 1970s saw the boot adopted by - not thrust upon - nearly all the 'tribes': Mods, glam, punks, ska, psychobillies, grebos, Goths, industrialists, nu-metal, hardcore, straight-edge, grunge, Britpop…
Then pop started to eat itself.
The internet spread like an epidemic, reaching fifty million users in eighteen months - a feat that took radio forty years. The first mobile phone text was sent in 1992; within three years, email was like oxygen. Everything had changed.
There were no tribes anymore. At least, "not like they used to make 'em."
You don’t see one tribe fighting another anymore, a haircut does not define a person to four albums by three bands.
The tribe is down to one person.
You. A one-man army.
The personal revolution manifests itself in a million ways. So-called ‘indie’ and ‘punk’ record labels of the 1970s and 1980s were created to cut out the suits. They were called ‘labels’ because of the round adhesive label smack bang in the middle of the vinyl.
Vinyl? CDs?
Now, you don’t even need a label.
Record, mix, master and post on the web from your own empire.
Hit the charts from downloads alone.
There is no one left to cut out. It’s all down to you.
Of course, just because we can all now ‘create’, doesn’t mean we are all actually any good. But the cream floats to the top, whatever the mode of transport.
Same with Dr. Martens.
Decades have come and gone, brands have exploded and then imploded, but the 1460 is still there, unique, individual, original. Anti-fashion defined in eight holes.
What’s seen as information overload to the older generation is just everyday surfing to the new generation. In one weekend edition of The New York Times, there is more information than a seventeenth century man was exposed to in his entire life. Dr. Martens haven’t been around since the 1600s, but in terms of ‚’brands’ that mean something, that last, that reinvent and evolve, they pre-date pretty much everything.
By the mid-1990s, Dr. Martens had festered in the minds of youth without a single penny of ‘marketing spend’, longer than the majority of global brands had even existed. There is no comparison. This is not a brand, it is a way of thinking, a mode of expression.
The problem with ‘brands’ is that they dictate. They might offer the must-have item of the season, but they design it, shape it, form it and sell it. You have no say, other than handing over your money. Look at the word: ‘brand’. That’s what they do to cattle.
Rebel.
Create your own brand.
Dr. Martens have always been different. No other brand has been mutated, customised, fucked up and freaked out like DM’s. Without asking or being able to stop it. It happened to them. They were just fascinated bystanders on a journey that has raced through every crevice of subculture, every twist and turn of youthful creativity and now, here, with a generation who have always had email, mp3s and downloads, it is as relevant and vibrant as ever.
Because although the tribes no longer stride through London or New York, although individuality is the music for the masses, although fashion is just another way of defining yourself, the Dr. Martens ‘brand’ has come full circle, it is a blank canvas on which a generation can paint their personality. You can wear your grunge shorts, your emo hair, your punk tatts, your metal piercings and your pride on your sleeve, all at the same time, there are no limits, no boundaries, no pigeon-holes to fit into.
To be creative sometimes you have to rebel.
To rebel you have to have something to rebel against.
Driving fast, drinking cheap beer and smashing windows isn’t rebellion. The best form of rebellion is individualism. Thinking for yourself.
Information overload is the most fantastic element of modern life. You can have it all. You don’t need to align yourself with one band, one tribe, one venue, one gig; you can share your console with a complete stranger twenty thousand miles away; you can post your demo on a site that has a greater population than most countries.
But you need anchors in this sea of creativity.
You need things you can rely on.
Things you can recruit to your army.
Friends, whether they add you or not.
Tunes loaded, down.
Ideas loaded, up.
Fashions that express.
Possessions that matter.
Things that inspire self-expression, not commodities that spoon-feed an identity.
Dr. Martens anchor you, liberate your creativity, inspire and fuel your identity. Our heritage fits your future; your future is our future.
MaDness.
JLew Out!
Here is a photo of a classic. Typically in the boot world with laces they talk about the height of a boot by the number of eyelets that the laces go through. These boots in the photo are 10 eyes in one of the original colors. If you also notice the made in England tag. In recent years Dr.Martens took their production from England to China. It was sad to see that happen but companies have to make good margins to stay in business. However, there are still a few style made in England.
Here is a quick history on the brand. Courtesy of the brand.
When the Dr. Martens boot first catapulted from a working-class essential to a counter-cultural icon back in the 1960s, the world was pre-internet, pre-MTV, pre-CD, pre-mp3s, pre-mobile phones… hey, they’d only just invented the teenager. In the years before the boot’s birthday, 1st April, 1960, kids just looked like tribute acts to their parents, younger but the same. Rebellion was only just on the agenda for some - for most kids of the day, starved of music, fashion, art and choice, it was not even an option.
But then an unlikely union of two kindred spirits in distinctly different countries ignited a phenomenon.
In Munich, Germany, Dr Klaus Maertens had a garage full of inventions, including a shoe sole almost literally made of air; in Northampton, England, the Griggs family had a history of making quality footwear and their heads were full of ideas. They met, like a classic band audition, through an advert in the classified pages of a magazine. A marriage was born, an icon conceived of innovation and self-expression.
Together they took risks.
They jointly created a boot that defined comfort but was practical, hard-wearing and a design classic. At first, like some viral infection, the so-called 1460 stooped near to the ground, kept a low profile, a quiet revolution.
But then something incredible started to happen.
The postmen, factory workers and transport unions who had initially bought the boot by the thousand, were joined by rejects, outcasts and rebels from the fringes of society.
At first, it was the working-classes; before long it was the masses.
Skinheads were the first subculture to adopt the boot in the early 1960s, spilling out of the East End of London, then across Britain and the world; initially non-racist and obsessive about their fashion, by the time the skinhead movement was corrupted with elements of right-wing extremism, Dr Martens had already morphed into a torchbearer for a brave new world.
The late 1960s and 1970s saw the boot adopted by - not thrust upon - nearly all the 'tribes': Mods, glam, punks, ska, psychobillies, grebos, Goths, industrialists, nu-metal, hardcore, straight-edge, grunge, Britpop…
Then pop started to eat itself.
The internet spread like an epidemic, reaching fifty million users in eighteen months - a feat that took radio forty years. The first mobile phone text was sent in 1992; within three years, email was like oxygen. Everything had changed.
There were no tribes anymore. At least, "not like they used to make 'em."
You don’t see one tribe fighting another anymore, a haircut does not define a person to four albums by three bands.
The tribe is down to one person.
You. A one-man army.
The personal revolution manifests itself in a million ways. So-called ‘indie’ and ‘punk’ record labels of the 1970s and 1980s were created to cut out the suits. They were called ‘labels’ because of the round adhesive label smack bang in the middle of the vinyl.
Vinyl? CDs?
Now, you don’t even need a label.
Record, mix, master and post on the web from your own empire.
Hit the charts from downloads alone.
There is no one left to cut out. It’s all down to you.
Of course, just because we can all now ‘create’, doesn’t mean we are all actually any good. But the cream floats to the top, whatever the mode of transport.
Same with Dr. Martens.
Decades have come and gone, brands have exploded and then imploded, but the 1460 is still there, unique, individual, original. Anti-fashion defined in eight holes.
What’s seen as information overload to the older generation is just everyday surfing to the new generation. In one weekend edition of The New York Times, there is more information than a seventeenth century man was exposed to in his entire life. Dr. Martens haven’t been around since the 1600s, but in terms of ‚’brands’ that mean something, that last, that reinvent and evolve, they pre-date pretty much everything.
By the mid-1990s, Dr. Martens had festered in the minds of youth without a single penny of ‘marketing spend’, longer than the majority of global brands had even existed. There is no comparison. This is not a brand, it is a way of thinking, a mode of expression.
The problem with ‘brands’ is that they dictate. They might offer the must-have item of the season, but they design it, shape it, form it and sell it. You have no say, other than handing over your money. Look at the word: ‘brand’. That’s what they do to cattle.
Rebel.
Create your own brand.
Dr. Martens have always been different. No other brand has been mutated, customised, fucked up and freaked out like DM’s. Without asking or being able to stop it. It happened to them. They were just fascinated bystanders on a journey that has raced through every crevice of subculture, every twist and turn of youthful creativity and now, here, with a generation who have always had email, mp3s and downloads, it is as relevant and vibrant as ever.
Because although the tribes no longer stride through London or New York, although individuality is the music for the masses, although fashion is just another way of defining yourself, the Dr. Martens ‘brand’ has come full circle, it is a blank canvas on which a generation can paint their personality. You can wear your grunge shorts, your emo hair, your punk tatts, your metal piercings and your pride on your sleeve, all at the same time, there are no limits, no boundaries, no pigeon-holes to fit into.
To be creative sometimes you have to rebel.
To rebel you have to have something to rebel against.
Driving fast, drinking cheap beer and smashing windows isn’t rebellion. The best form of rebellion is individualism. Thinking for yourself.
Information overload is the most fantastic element of modern life. You can have it all. You don’t need to align yourself with one band, one tribe, one venue, one gig; you can share your console with a complete stranger twenty thousand miles away; you can post your demo on a site that has a greater population than most countries.
But you need anchors in this sea of creativity.
You need things you can rely on.
Things you can recruit to your army.
Friends, whether they add you or not.
Tunes loaded, down.
Ideas loaded, up.
Fashions that express.
Possessions that matter.
Things that inspire self-expression, not commodities that spoon-feed an identity.
Dr. Martens anchor you, liberate your creativity, inspire and fuel your identity. Our heritage fits your future; your future is our future.
MaDness.
JLew Out!
Monday, November 2, 2009
Vans Slip On
Classic Vans. I can't remember when I started wearing Van's and I have no clue how many pairs I have had in my life. I currently have a pair in a box in the garage on deck waiting to be worn this winter. They are the original skate and bmx shoe. They started the entire era of skate shoes. Van's has probably been the company to perfect vulcanizing a skate shoe. I love slip on's and I love the lace up's. Here is a pair classics.
In 1994, Vans began manufacturing overseas and sponsored the Inaugural Triple Crown series which developed into the Vans Triple Crown series. In 1998, Vans opened a 46,000 square-foot, indoor-outdoor Vans Skate park at the Block in Orange County and in 2002 an enclosed skatepark was opened in the Festival Bay Mall on International Drive in Orlando, Florida. In 2000 and 2001, Forbes recognized Vans as one of “America’s Best Small Companies." In 2004, Vans launched the Vans Customs on their website. This allowed customers to log onto the Vans website and design their own pair of Vans Slip-ons, mid-cuts, or high-tops.
Vans began in 1966 as the Van Doren Rubber Company producing shoes for different sports such as basketball, baseball, and wrestling. These products did not sell very well, and in 1983, Vans was forced to file for bankruptcy. Three years later, Vans paid back all creditors and came out of bankruptcy, in part because, according to the company history, "Vans Slip-Ons gained international attention and appeal when they were worn by Sean Penn in the 1982, iconic youth film Fast Times at Ridgemont High.[1] "Penn's black and white checkered Vans ... [took the company] from like ... $20 million to ... $800 million ... after that film came out," Marketplace reported in 2009.[2]
In 1994, Vans began manufacturing overseas and sponsored the Inaugural Triple Crown series which developed into the Vans Triple Crown series. In 1998, Vans opened a 46,000 square-foot, indoor-outdoor Vans Skate park at the Block in Orange County and in 2002 an enclosed skatepark was opened in the Festival Bay Mall on International Drive in Orlando, Florida. In 2000 and 2001, Forbes recognized Vans as one of “America’s Best Small Companies." In 2004, Vans launched the Vans Customs on their website. This allowed customers to log onto the Vans website and design their own pair of Vans Slip-ons, mid-cuts, or high-tops.
Ummm...Need I say more?
Also one more photo b/c I feel that it is somewhat relevant.
JLew Out!
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