2006 - BEST OF THE BEST SNEAKERS

Woody_Sneaker Freaker_Melbourne
Lacoste MIssouri85 x Snkr Frkr Colab

Far be it for me to blow my own trumpet, but someone has to! Therefore I’m gonna choose the shoe that we designed for Lacoste, the eighties tennis runner known for some reason as the Missouri 85. I really like the old tennis era when players had personality and pizzazz to burn and the shoes seemed hot in a quite simple way. Edberg and Lendl from adidas, his argyle apparel was a huge winner. I love the Navratilovas, the new GV from Puma and the Nike Trainer One which was worn by McEnroe. I don’t know what it is, at the moment I’m only into white and black, with little splashes of colour. Same with the old running styles as well.

I was very specific with the materials and they got it right first time, which is not bad since I was in Melbourne, they are in London and the factory is in Vietnam. Once I signed off, they made 24 pairs only for our launch in New York at Alife, and we made it with a day to spare. All up it took about five weeks I think. The shoe comes with some nice tissue paper and a copy of Snkr Frkr that can’t be bought anywhere else as a nice little extra. I’d have loved to do a huge number with a special box that would chill beer or something but Mark at Lacoste said I was an idiot.

The materials sound random but are all chosen for a specific reason – nubuck, toweling, suede, mesh and perforated leather. When I saw the model I knew the heel piece had to be perforated to break up what is a visually large chunk of the shoe. I’ve always admired how the Japanese brands mix it up. Using several materials to create balance is not easy - so often it can end up a dog’s breakfast but in this case it looks smooth as Vegemite. I also managed to convince Lacoste that we needed an albino crocodile, the dark green was never going to work. RIP Steve Irwin.

I didn’t really know what sort of response we would get. Lacoste is a brand with great heritage but they’re hardly on the lips of every sneaker collector out there. People seemed to enjoy the fact we did something out of left field and I’m glad we did now. For a while I worried it was a crazy thing to do but now they are now on eBay for $4-500, which is nice for the ego, but also means someone bought it to make money, and I would rather they love the shoe and want to keep it forever. How awfully noble of moi – c’est la Vie! If we did it again, I would definitely increase the numbers but no matter what you do, someone always gets their nuts out of joint. So in the end there were 250 pairs made. We could have made 500 I guess. We could have made 1000. But where do you stop? The dilemma is that I wanted it to be sought after, but I’d also like everyone to be able to get a pair. There’s no ideal answer to this, I certainly wouldn’t want to make 24 pairs. What’s the point?