Overkill Break Down Their Latest ASICS Colab
has been supplying Berlin’s sneaker fiends for over a decade now. Recently they’ve started parlaying their immense popularity into collaborations with major brands including PONY and . This time around they’ve hooked up with ASICS to craft this lush ‘Desert Rose’rendition of the Gel Sight, a recent retro from the class of 1992. We tracked down Thomas, one of Overkill’s co-founders, to rap about their unlikely inspiration and why standing out from the pack shouldn’t be the sole focus when designing colabs.
Where did the ‘Desert Rose’ inspiration come from?
The very basic background idea came from Amelie, who works with us at Overkill. She showed us a jacket and said that she’d love to see a sneaker in the jacket’s colours, with some nice contrasting details. From there we tried various colours and options and finally came to this mix of salmon with sand and pastel mint against the dark red. We searched for one more kicking colour to go with it and found this tone called ‘Desert Rose’. This kind of pink was the perfect foil to the combination. Then we thought, ‘DAAAMN!,’ that’s a wicked name for a colab.
So, twirling all this through our heads, we came to the idea of a flower coming from the Moroccan desert, which we could layer some nice details over. At this point, everything on the shoe made sense – the desert sand in the beige salmon color, the mint for the famous Moroccan tea, the rich red for the numerous spices and the pink for the lovely desert rose flower. The most spectacular detail on the shoe is the pattern on the heel and inside of the shoe which shows traditional Moroccan tiles.
Sweet! It’s quite a complicated design. How many samples did it take to get all the components working together perfectly?
We went for three rounds of samples. We definitely needed all three to get all the materials right.
The suede looks pretty lush.
Within the sampling process, we thought about executing a whole suede leather shoe with some Cordura details. But when we saw the combination of the very soft high-class suede together with the fine ripped mesh, we thought that this would be the perfect mix. For the tile pattern on the heel, we first tried a photo print on artificial leather, but the version now with the woven material and pattern on the heel makes the whole shoe more compatible.
There’s been a flood of ASICS colabs lately, how will your shoe will stand out from the crowd?
We do not think that way. We just love our idea and we are very happy with it, and if other humans love it too then we are even happier! We don’t like to compare our colabs to other stores in terms of whose is better. If an idea is strong, let the people decide and it will speak for itself.
What else is up your sleeves at Overkill? Is there something special coming with the shoes?
Of course! It wouldn’t be Overkill if we didn’t have a few extra nice details. We don’t want to give away too many surprises from the beginning, but we can say that there will be a whole package to come with the product, including a foot-warming tool from a famous German brand that creates outstanding little shirties for the feet!
The Overkill x ASICS Gel Sight 'Desert Rose' will be released exclusively at Overkill on the 11th of July. Pick up the new issue of Sneaker Freaker magazine to read more about the collaboration and for more sneaker news!