ACG FEATURE - PART TWO
“Tinker is to blame for starting the crazy name thing with his misspelled Air Mowabb, but I’m the culprit of the most egregious (lame) examples. Air Astotle was my favorite. Most of the names were just phonetic spellings of words that sometimes had double meanings or just gave us all a good laugh.
Peter Kallen, the ACG apparel designer at the time and I would sit around over beers and make up names for products. One of the funnier ones came when Peter started complaining that he had to design some ‘cheapo running shorts’ as he called them. ‘They’re just pieces of shit’, he said. I suggested the POS short and we told marketing it stood for ‘POSitive’. I think the short stayed in the line for 10 years or so?
The Air Azona also stands out and I’m still particularly proud of it. I still wear them occasionally. I made them all leather so you could snowseal the uppers to keep the water out and to make them last longer. I made them especially for the famous Yosemite solo climber, Peter Croft. He did some of his historic Sierra ridge traverses in a pair of Air Azonas we had made for him using super sticky rubber.”
STEVE McDONALD
Check out our next feature: NIKE ACG FEATURE - PART ONE
