A SHOW CALLED KICKS.

NIKE AIR FORCE 180 “THE ADMIRAL” CUSTOM BY REVIVE CUSTOMS

Sometimes a custom job serves no better purpose than to repurpose an OG sneaker that has lost its luster, but sometimes a beaten-up base can serve as the inspiration for something beautiful. Perhaps drawing courage from the fact that the sneakers were all but destroyed to start, long-time sneaker customizer Revive Customs took an old pair of Nike Air Force 180 highs and transferred a theme reminiscent of the Air Jordan VI “Olympic” sneakers with inspiration from teammate David “The Admiral” Robinson. The shoes come out looking like they should be sold in a pack with the AJ6, and in photographs looks almost brand new. Restoration jobs don’t come better than this.

(Source: nicekicks.com)

WHAT THE SEKURE D DUNK LOWS AND THE CURRENT MARKET OF CUSTOM SNEAKERS

Sneaker customizer, Australian, G-Shock rep, and Custom Sneaker Forum founder Sekure D created a style all of his own years back when he began his work in custom shoes. The game is a much different place nowadays, and many custom sneaker designers and artists have abandoned the art form they once so loved to make way for hype beasts and trend riders. 

Custom sneakers have turned into a formula that involves taking a hyped shoe and a hyped pattern and combining them into the most sellable format possible. People make money, but the art is all but lost. While some still create original works of art and inspiration can still be found in the same places if you know how to dig, the majority of what is seen is nothing but color flips.

Sekure’s “What the Sekure D” pair - which dropped some months ago - takes the “flip” and flips it. The artist creates a pair of originally flipped custom sneakers, which are all but extinct in the current market. The pair features multiple original patterns from Sekure’s catalog; check out what he has to say below and more of his writing in the post:

If you were new to the scene you would swear looking at blogs that all anyone does when customizing sneakers is take pre existing colorways and patterns and repaint them onto a basketball shoe, imaginative right? I do not hate on peoples hustle or ability to flip this kind of work for large stacks but it’s disappointing to see this kind of work become the pinnacle of our field and be the only type rewarded by some of the major sneaker sites. Don’t we live in a scene that rewards originality anymore?

I begun customizing sneakers because I wanted shoes nobody else had, seeing people like Emmanuelabor, SBTG, bLue and 1OF push the boundaries of what a creative mind could do with a pair of sneakers made me decide to pursue my passion for a living and put off using my University Degrees. Seeing what we call custom sneakers today I sit back and wonder if I would still do the same thing if I was today finishing University, I am sure the answer is no.

GROW YOUR OWN STINGRAY SNEAKER FOR $1,800

The collision of science and public entertainment led to a very interesting moral dilemma in the film Jurassic Park, where animals were injected with DNA to turn them into other animals. We all know how that went. In one of the closest real-life stories we have to the themes of such a tale, Thai manufacturers RayFish Footwear are taking science and public fashion and colliding them into one mashed up superfishoe. 

Starting at $1,400, sneaker fans can select from a number of nature’s finest patterns - from zebra to rattlesnake to “Nemo” - and inject the pattern into the DNA of a stingray that will be grown for the specific purpose of being turned into a pair of shoes for your feet. As a declaration of superiority, our species can grow a nearly endless palette of designs on a lesser life form, while corporate marketing and many avenues of artistic expression may be further down the line as logos and sharp lines are out of the question at the moment, as co.Design reports:

“It would not be feasible for ordinary people to code their desired pattern in the DNA, so we made a design tool that allows them to create a pattern that we can actually grow on the stingrays,” says Dr. Raymond Ong, head of Rayfish Footwear. That tool eschews esoteric DNA snippets for a graphic-laden UI, allowing you to drag and drop up to nine patterns into your shoe, selected from a library of 29 styles of leather. With so many choices combining into such an array of designs, the possibilities seem endless, though obviously there are some natural limitations to just how specific users can be about a shoe that is ostensibly grown.

“We cannot breed any desirable shape or logo on the fishes, as our patterning process works by recording and recombining DNA of existing animals…. Squares are for instance not possible, as the expression of the DNA on the skin doesn’t allow it,” Dr. Ong explains. “Also, the patterns that grow on the actual fish sometimes slightly differ from what you see in the design tool. Although it is almost perfect, we are still developing the mapping between the design tool and the DNA encoding further.”

This obviously brings up a great many questions in regards to ethics, and while our society certainly does much, much worse things to the animals we already raise for things like food, clothing, and household product testing, it’s a bit more jarring to think that some of “nature’s” most glorious creations will be predestined to become merely another layer of separation between our holy feet and the ground beneath them. 

Co.Design’s Mark Wilson puts it well:

While I can conveniently forget that the leather in my shoes was once the skin of a cow, is there something different in knowing that the cow had been bred and slaughtered just for me? Is this a farm-to-table situation, where it’s more ethical to name the pig that you’ll eventually eat? Or am I creating the most majestic animal I could imagine just to thieve its gorgeous skin?

Check out their video to get an idea for the creation process, where there is now a design contest to win your own pair of mangod-created sneakers instead of paying the $14,000-16,000 asking price they are currently seeking.

Another moral dilemma comes with the claim that the skin pattern of another animal like a caterpillar can simply be transferred to the skin of a member of an alternate species. It’s simply not possible. What is possible is a genetic modification to match such patterns, but the line is fuzzy as to how “natural” this transferral really is. It seems that the company is just as capable of making up completely different designs as it is transferring over some of nature’s more beautiful works. Where the ethics lie in this claim is another question altogether.

So, what do you think?

(Source: solejunkie.com)

AMAZING SPIDERMAN CUSTOM FLIGHTPOSITE 3 BY MACHE

In the Summer of record-breaking comicbook movie releases, Foamposite and Flyposite hype, and custom sneaker design blog recognition (at least for color flips), no one has rocked it harder than Dan Gamache of Mache Customs. His latest work does exactly what good custom shoe design is supposed to do, and brings together iconic patterns and a compelling sneaker silhouette into a well-thought-out and inspired theme. The result is a shoe that would break necks without dominating an outfit. Mache is certainly one of the best out there at creating shoe designs that can work with various styles. 

NIKE LEBRON 9 “WEATHERMAN” CUSTOM BY SAB-ONE

When Kevin Durant’s “Weatherman” colorway for the Nike Zoom KDIV came out, it was predicted by some to be the next “NERF” or “South Beach” in color flip customs, but quickly slipped under the radar (no pun intended) when the “Galaxy” phenomenon swept the community. Some of the bigger names in customs didn’t forget this highly compelling makeup, and Sab-One recently took to a staple in color flips to show how well it could cross over. His Lebron 9 custom matches the color palette almost perfectly, and recreated the Doppler Radar pattern on the ankle and inside the shoe. 

Sab works almost exclusively in one-offs, but you can ask for your own at his site.

NIKE TOTAL AIR FOAMPOSITE MAX

Taking a pattern adopted by customizers and a style of sneaker adopted as a base favorite, Nike’s newest Foamposite design features a splatter fade much like the Miami nights colorways that have grown popular of late. Black and blue intersect in various collisions across the upper, and the midsole continues the pattern as a silver Swoosh provides contrast. Details soon.

AIR JORDAN I “DAVE WHITE” CUSTOM BY MACHE

Dan of Mache Customs is one customizer who really liked the Dave White Air Jordan design from early this year. In further commemoration, Mache has created another custom sneaker design, this time on Air Jordan I lows with the toe dipped in gold. A white leather base with red stripes around the back mocking White’s style, and stars with black accents across the side set the pair off as arguably his best Dave White homage to date.

(Source: machecustoms.com)