LA GEAR x AMSTERDAM x PATTA x ZONDER FILTER

Tell us about working with L.A. Gear and the nostalgic effect it had on you ladies, finally working with a brand that you loved so much back in the day.
We both already owned a few pairs of vintage L.A. Gears. Every time we would wear them it would provoke a lot of reaction. People were staring and making remarks about them and sometimes they would even want to take pictures of them. We were already promoting them for a long time, so when the decision was finally made and we got the assignment, we had all these different wild ideas of how it should be. We decided to dig around in the past to come up with the best designs and concepts. Initially, we were only responsible for the marketing aspect of retro-ing the Stardust, but due to our commitment and strong ideas about how the shoe should look, we ended up designing the colourways and materials too. The assignment was only for the shoes, however if it were up to us, we would have loved to create a whole apparel and merchandise line, from top to toe. 

Can you give us some insight into the process of making the first Limited Edition ‘Fireball’ model and how you chose all the elements that make up this firecracker!
When we started the project we already had in mind that this shoe had to be imaginative and stylish at the same time. The basic concepts for both the Limited Edition and shoes in the General Release (GR) line were designed with a few stereotypical girls in mind. We got our inspiration from American staples such as varsity colours, cheerleaders, cotton candy and cupcakes, so we started to design colourways based on those staples. One version just literally exploded off our computer screen, and we knew this one could never be a GR release, it was way too special! It was a shoe that would snap necks on the street and when we showed it to the Patta crew they were like, ‘Wow, now that rocks!’ We knew then that a star was born, a Fireball to be exact.