.... Where do I start! Surely the most highly anticipated trainer for this year has finally arrived. The Nike Air Yeezy Quickstrike arrived on 4th April and where was I.... at University in Norwich aka the backside of England aka the middle of NOWHERE! Where was everyone else... queing in New York, Chicago, Philly and London for up to 24 hours to get their hands on the first 3000 pieces of Nike and Kanye's product of popular culture, product of design history.
Rewind to the Grammy's when speculation started about the shoe Kanye was wearing during his performance. Pause at the blogs going crazy [mine included] about what the Yeezy was, when was it coming, how was it going to look and press Play for the Complex Magazine article that breaks down all the moments of the concept, the design and the thought process behind it all that true footwear lovers like myself wanted to know.
The issue wasn't avaliable in the UK as yet but my special courier brought it back from his trip to NYC.
Broken down into three phases:
Phase 1: The Promise Phase 2: The Process Phase 3: The Product
It was more than an excellent read and for someone like myself who is learning through blogging how exactly to write about trainers and for someone who is trying to design trainers it was perfect. The early sketches from Kanye, which I took a bit of delight in and realised that mine were really not that bad, then Mark Smith's sketches, the prototype Yeezy's and the CAD images......
WOW !
You may notice a trend in my posts of late as I work towards getting a fully fledged website dedicated to creative ideas, dreams, fashion, music and lifestyle together. But the truth is [sidebar: name drop!] Dreamers NEVER Die.
"Every guy drew Nikes in fourth grade, so to really do it is a dream come true" - Kanye West.
I've been following Nike 1 World project where 18 select people from the fields of sport, design, music, art and fashion design their own Air Force One. And I believe Kanye could have done that, but it does just not fit with his character of being 'apart from the rest' a novel concept, a new type of artist, designer, producer, icon and person of influence.
Kanye dubbs himself as the epitome of pop culture and as Noah Callahan Bever puts it rather nicely,
"Kanye West is performance art. He's an idea. A brand. A Mission. An inspiring, infuritating, over-the-top and constantly evolving contradiction of values that are articulated, and often heavy-handedly through the mans every expression - be it producing, rapping, singing, designing or more often than not these days, just living [...] It's all presentation a new vision of the world, staring him as the catalyst."
I sat down with the aim of writing a post solely about the Air Yeezy, but I can't just concentrate on the trainer and skirt over the main designers. You can't not mention Kanye West.
He breaks so many boundaries and binds genres and people, he does what HE likes and what HE wants to do. He has a vision of what the beat should be like, what he should wear today, what he should say at interviews and award shows. And while the blogs and the "media" like to brand it as ego, self-centered, childlike and narracistic behaviour... part of me says let them, maybe they are right. But the bigger part of me says why should he let people dictate what he thinks, he pushes SO many boundaries, he is outside the box. He is not afraid and therefore his opinion comes unabashed and straight to the point no political correctness just pure words. From his mouth: truth, from his heart: soul - Kanye West.
