Read on Twitter
Been thinking a lot about storytelling as it applies to sneakers as I dig things out of storage. And we're at a point now where all the brands want to tell stories. So they hire storytellers. And some of this is OK. But a lot of it is bullshit.
Because yes, sneakers now come with stories. Retro implies history, and that history has a story attached. And whether it's Michael Jordan having worn it, or whatever SB or Kanye comes up with, sure, that's a story. And in some cases it matters.
But honestly? The real story doesn't start until you buy the sneaker yourself. And it doesn't REALLY start until you put that sneaker on your foot. The brands want you to believe that you can buy the story. And that's true to an extent. You can buy A story.
But the story you buy is the same story being sold to thousands, if not millions of other people. The unique story starts when you make that sneaker your own. And that only starts when you put it on your foot and merge its story with your own.
If you're just buying shoes to buy them, checking off some internal checklist, that's fine. But those shoes, those stories, aren't really yours. They're not alive.
I pulled out those Supreme Dunks today, and while they're just a trashed pair of shoes in a plain orange and brown box, everything about them tells a story, from the extra laces in the bag to the receipt. I remember what it felt like having them passed to me over the counter.
I remember bringing them straight back to the SLAM offices and putting them on, and basically not taking them off for the next five years or so. I remember slicing the tongue to unstuff it. I remember replacing the beat black laces with the Product Red ones.
I remember wearing them to ride my fixed gear to Max Fish, to play wiffle ball in a muddy backyard, to countless Knicks and Nets games. Those aren't just A pair of Dunks, they are MY pair of Dunks. And I didn't make them mine by buying them and putting them in a stack.
I made them mine by wearing the shit out of them, by wearing holes in the lining and wearing down the soles until the white showed through the black and then wearing them some more.
Literally thousands of pairs of shoes have passed through my hands since I bought those in 2002, and I've realized recently that only a handful have mattered to me in the same way that those did. It's made it so much easier to let the other ones go.
And it's not about their being Supreme. That's looking at the finger pointing at the moon and missing all the heavenly glory. It's about what speaks to you. What makes you want to put a pair of shoes on and never take them off.
