Okay, so yeah, what are you doing right now, and how did you turn this love of yours into a career?

What am I doing? I am parenting. And then as my side job I’m a designer (laughing). Color designer specifically overseeing the creative storytelling, color, materials, and just kind of like the nerdy shit that allows product to be better. And that all transpired from an obsession with things, and why things were drawing my attention. Most of it was through things like the sound of Velcro or color combinations. Sport, teams, Starter jacket zippers, trim details ... things that would tingle when I would touch them. So, it kind of kept growing outside of that. It took a while, but I found that I could make that a career.

Talk about this tingle.

Ouuuf, yeah. One of the pieces I want to share is exactly that. It was one of the first times where Velcro wasn't juvenile. And it’s almost like seeing Victoria’s Secret for the first time. I remember seeing the elastic of a thong, in like seventh grade, and I think it happened to be magenta or something like that, and the expansion that happens in it. Small little details. Something I wasn’t even supposed to see. And then it’s just like, wait a minute, there was a decision that went into someone spec’ing that and deciding—“That’s what we need to sell.” Yeah, so those little small fireworks.

The tingle isn’t a one-dimensional experience. It’s kind of like a memory. It’s a smell. It’s a feeling. And it’s a product at the end of the day that can interact with the human body. And that’s what a product is for me.

“Deion Sanders and Allen Iverson, for me, cracked an egg that never went back in the shell.” “Deion Sanders and Allen Iverson, for me, cracked an egg that never went back
in the shell.”
It's the simple understanding that these people are playing the same sport, but they’re playing it differently. And they look different while they play. And that is crazy. Allen Iverson was one of those people who, all around, his storyline was always present. In high school, he was a football player that ended up being really good at basketball. And that right there, that trigger would inherently live on a football field. It’s hard to look unique. Unless you’re a dominating player in what you play.

But to be able to dominate in something barbaric like football and actually be able to be graceful and exposed ... On a basketball court, you get Allen Iverson literally having everyone at his fingertips. You can hate him as much as you want. But his style of play, and his style on and off court, you can’t not respect it. People are wearing shorts down to and past their knees. And they’re still able to play.

You know, coaches used to talk about people sagging their pants and like, yeah, I get if people are sagging their pants, maybe that takes away some of the hip mobility and play. But if shorts are staying at the waist, and the short goes past the knees in a dazzle or a mesh material that’s not restricting much, especially an athlete who’s doing things that you’re not going to read?—You know, some of the best athletes in archaic times were wearing body armor.

I think a lot of it comes down to outdated coaching who couldn't fathom not being able to control their athletes. But then when he was able to penetrate the NBA—it was wildfire. There was no going back. And with Deion Sanders, him being a two sport athlete, he unforgivably, unapologetically penetrated the market and just like talked his talk and walked his walk ... a lot of gold, a lot of sunglasses inside, the stuff that people weren’t that comfortable with. But then when he tapped into product it was just like it was over. That is the Velcro that I was talking about, the Diamond Turf is forever solidified in my existence as like “the” shoe of that moment.

Does the performance or culture or design of something make it timeless?

It’s definitely all of it. But time is the biggest thing. When things were so borderline primitive, when people were playing baseball, running track, playing football all in the same shoe, that's unheard of. It doesn’t happen anymore. Inherently that makes people think holistically, it’s like when you’re making product for the military that has to last in the rain, desert, every scenario. Product now is a little bit softer and it needs to have an element of trend involved.

Trend for me—better watch what I say—but trend is a blurry line between craft and what people want. Cheat codes, people want cheat codes, and I think that’s what trend is. And I think there’s a time and a place. If I was a new brand starting up, you’d want as many cheat codes as possible to just get your leg up.

But self-expression and timing, tapping into the right authenticator, or I hate the word now, influencer. There’s more chance that you’ll get lost in the ocean of information now than penetrating and getting to the right eyeball. Some of the slower brands, when I think of slow, I think of brands like Merrell, and Clarks, and I guess you could throw Converse in there. But they didn’t want to be the first, the fastest. They didn’t want to be on a runway. And I think inherently without wanting to, people ran out of other options.