How Michael Jordan Changed Sneaker Culture in Chicago I Sole Origins

I can't not be in Chicago no matter where I am in the world our culture is embedded in sports culture growing up in the 90s when Michael Jordan was at the center of the sports world it was just an amazing thing it was like you knew him because he was in our living room every other day that's the amazing thing about retro Jordans they mean so much at different aspects of my life May 6 1989 we were just the underdogs like everybody knew Cleveland was gonna take us and then to win at the buzzer it

was the Air Jordan fours he would wearing the fours in the shot it's like some imminent spirit in the air so I'm always in sneakers I'm always in Nikes Jordans because that's what represents me it's all about Chicago whether you're from the south side and you love caseless classics or you're from high park and you love Air Force Ones or you're all over Chicago and you love Jordan the sneaker culture has been huge in Chicago for years Chicago has been like an overlooked market for so long it's just like the true blue-collar essence of what

Chicago is it's not fantasy is not grittiest like we go out and get it I think Chicago hasn't been celebrated for what it is which is arguably the most dominant city in fashion and sneakers [Music] we only got um 1511 yeah he's been just drop he's right 3x gotcha nice on a sneakers me like DMA at the pass or a preacher I give it's like you get to pick tough people you know get hit a stories you get today livelihood company just see boxes of shoes and let me see inventory some people see dead it's

a nasty opportunity awesome super dope I smell my sneakers because like me good new pair of shoes as a kid you think you've run faster jump higher so what I do when I smell my sneakers like imagines my youth isn't how that freshness smells like man like fresh air it's like it's just a feeling that gives you a feeling girl gives you a filming it's like man it just hits your lungs you get high I'm being honest it's like a sneaker high like it's the best meal ever yeah man retro wines it's weird I start

at all [Music] the air jordan line made sneaker culture popular culture i don't know if there's ever been anybody in history that has ever inspired that many people to buy product that michael jordan when the first air jordans dropped the impact of the chicago culture was like a nuclear bomb prior to michael jordan everyone wore deals you saw little spots of Fela and other brands but it was an adidas town when Michael came into Chicago and started playing for the Bulls the rest you know is his history prior to that we didn't know anything about

winning we were a big sports town but no one had really won anything you gotta think about it you come from nothing when you're in Chicago besides being one of the greatest basketball players of all time he represented the city and then he stepped into the fashion industry and made his own shoe and I feel like every kid they put on a pair of Jordans felt like that magic that Jordan gave them [Music] without Michael Jordan I probably wouldn't have cared about shoes nobody wanted to be Charles Barkley everybody wanted to be like Michael Jordan

he made you think you can fly and jump make you believe so true statement my name pay I can do anything that's why I sell shoes not because of my people just looked at it as oh it's a cool shoe that Michael Jordan's wearing but it's a dump it wasn't until the NBA banned the black red colorway that people kind of went crazy over that one Air Jordans changed the style of the city especially with the red and black colorways they kind of created the go-to color for fashion in Chicago black and red is the

toughest you could get it fits so well with Jordans on-court persona cutthroat I can't think of a black red shoe that doesn't seem like Chicago to me the entire black red color palette is known as one city you cannot attribute that color palette to any other city but Chicago well you have an athlete becoming arguably the most dominant businessman of the era and what that kind of means to a kid from the inner city especially ously like Chicago has to be the world post his career with the Bulls he walked in a bar I was

in called North Beach Club in Chicago and I was playing ping pong on the ping pong table in the bar and so he came up to the opposite end of the ping pong table and was like let's play and I was like what it's all I beat him so that was my claim to fame I always tell people like yo I beat Michael Jordan at ping pong Don suitabie is probably the most Ellis dude in America Don has never had a bad day he's a real Chicago sports fan always reppin Chicago in a really really

positive cool way I always get the same I always sing hill with Calle and you always heard the name and it's just legendary Don used to be on the trade floor that the Mercantile Exchange Donna have on a polo like fresh like Ralph polo thing he having a big Cuban the Jesus piece the mercantile trade jacket trade just on the trade floppy just picture that when Don see doesn't design he peels back the layers of what was going on in Chicago he always pushes the boundaries and he always wants something different if you give any

kid like a pencil and a piece of paper or crayons he's gonna draw he's gonna enjoy it all throughout high school when other kids would start wearing the same Jordans I would wear I would try to do something to customize my Jordans to make them just a little different I remember in 1992 to age h7s came out the Bordeaux's I took my swoosh off my beau Jackson's and sold it on my Air Jordans sevens and then to my mom's fingernail polish and painted it burgundy so it kind of matched the Bordeaux color so you know

I just took that spirit of moms when I worked on other gigs people always wanted to have a better version of what other people had but they wanted to have the same foundation everybody wants a hat but they want a better hat Don C created a better hat when I worked in the music industry I was tour with Kanye and jay-z I would make them custom hats every night I made one for Kanye a Bulls cap and he wore it to the CFDA award so that was like the first time people saw what was later

to be known as a just on cap and then when you look at what he's done even with Jordan Brand or converse since it's incredible when Don sees Jordan to drop it was the best thing in the world he's taking shoes that have not truly been the most popular silhouette like a Jordan too and he's adding quilting and adding texture and adding material that is making people covet an item that was not the most popular shoot for Jordan Brand the Jordan to no one understood it's actually my favorite but no one understood the two because

it was a different design it was handmade in Italy it had the wings box but I love the don see Jordan's hookah lab this is one of my Grails because it's like man I was able to mix Chanel and Jordan you got say to be able to mix Chanel and Jordan like of course they're gonna love it because of Jordan too and he makes it look like a Chanel bag that his wife had there's always a story behind it I'm influenced by different derivatives of OG sneakers and different characteristics Jordan Brand to me is old-school

but I like to put like a modern twist on old-school designs he brings back shoes that the traditional public might not have even known about and makes them one of the most popular items in the world because it's authentic to him people in Chicago will tell you that Don C captures the stories that were going on in Chicago through his designs because he lived it people have a light on Chicago now but the sneaker culture has been huge in Chicago for years we've always had sneaker shops and we've always had retailers where you could buy

the cool kicks it's just that everyone thought New York was better but it really a lot of the same things were happening here in Chicago too we the boutiques felt that we could change the culture because we could do it at a drop of a dime the big corporations couldn't do that those are the true forerunners of what we're privileged to be working on today the people that paved the way and just helped build the culture to what it is leaders was created in 2002 by quarry guilty when the 90s everyone was wearing Karl Kani

FUBU Pelle Pelle but the trends had changed a lot of people wanted things that reflected themselves things that were really speaking to who they were where they were from at this time there is this world that's bubbling and it's through the internet and it's through magazines and it's through music videos and it just so happens that Chicago goes from having the best athlete of all time to maybe the most influential artist of all time with Kanye West in the sneaker culture world the hero wit from the sports athlete to the musician when hip-hop became as

big as it is today hip-hop is like the unifying median of everything sports culture is hip-hop fashion culture is hip-hop in urban music everybody dressed the same like it was baggy jerseys baggy jeans and you had this one guy wearing a pink polo and slightly fit jeans and a different kind of sneaker he had his own look and he wouldn't change it Kanye made me want to get cocky I felt like I could express myself through my fashion and he made me feel okay to do that it just gave you a whole nother type of

sounds like you could walk in the room and I say nothing in your outfit speak for yourself like you can look different and dress different and still be accepted by mainstream and he came out with his own shoe line it was like history when Kanye first dropped the Shuler was like so revolutionary because it was his own shoe it was nothing ever done like that artists getting his shoe like in this area was just unheard of it was the first time a non-athlete made a splash that large with this shoe and the shoe was amazing

and you looked at it and you said that is different than any other shoe that's ever came out it was definitely inspired by Kanye growing up in Chicago it was the Jordan 3 sole he's just like Jordan 3 so let me put like the future on top of it that shoe lines down the street everything the energy of it I think that was resale heaven if you can get it like people pay their rent when those shoes were dropping you were calling your friends and you had no shame trying to get that shoe like iPhone

wear now stop ringing I think for like two weeks we had to just take how the phone off the hook we didn't take any calls listen to me relationships work tarnished on the release of that shoe believe me Kanye is an amazing creator but he's so larger than life that people get tired of it they like oh I know Kanye who's really doing it Calle doing everything usually when a musician or even an athlete gets a collab with a brand they just do like a colorway on the brand if you look at what he's done

with adidas he's literally created his own shoes [Music] man look at this people don't know the bootleg mannchild move left easy couldn't get it right so you've noticed all the years this soon he first came I had to listen down the middle of it 24 like socks you want to feel real comfortable its first time these are using the boost technology the Turtledove was everything to me I was super excited this was after Kanye left Nike and I was just excited just to see him do something different at the time everybody was more about running

and just being comfortable in that she was amazing what made Kanye's so fascinating is while he was a musician he was also an artist that had a different perspective on product that had a different perspective on fabric and I don't know if we've really seen someone like that you're not gonna stop cannot go control Kanye like Michael Jordan you're not gonna control Michael so Michael Jordan inspires an entire kind of population you have this underdog kind of artist coming out of Chicago in Kanye and now you have artists like actual designers that are now the

most popular look at sales the most popular shoes are Virgil's off-white Nike shoes period that is the most sought after item in the world it's not a recording artist it's not an athlete by himself it is someone's unique touch that is done through the lens of design he was into skateboarding and DJing and he kind of picked inspiration from all these different touchpoints of culture and you see it in his designs me and virtually were just touring all the time so we would just see things like yogi in Japan we need this well we wanted

our friends back home to be able to see through the lens of product the things that we were privileged enough to see all over the world the off-white collab blew up because the dotted line to Kanye the cosign between Virgil and Kanye and then the other dotted line to don see you know kind of made it part of the same family with Kanye insisting on you know his fashion and his kind of perspective I think it helped give a voice to guys like Virgil and Don there's stories about attending a Louis Vuitton fashion show and

like Virgil not being able to get in and like Kanye getting him in and in this guise to create a director of Louie Vuitton Delic that's impossible man I'm just happy dad people with my circle and my friends have been able to surpass their dreams and be able to rep the city there's like a thread of commonality through all of them you know Don and Virgil or friends Don and Conde are friends Kanye and Virgil are friends in most cultures and cities all these guys would hate each other rather than competing with each other the

city of Chicago has bred people that work with each other [Music] Rena's second biggest city we've ever gonna overlook so much it's when I have like the east coast of West Coast because I'm coast to get on imports there we kind of homegrown everything here is built from without so it's really hard worked in and great it like I say I'm Michael Jordan Chicago we've worked hard in Braddock the evolution of popularity is now looking at designers the people that grew up in Chicago really kind of came up to become creatives that can provide a

spin to product that can provide a different perspective and materialization of product when you have people who live the culture take cues from the city take cues from product design understand Jordan significance these guys are putting stories from growing up in Chicago into the product and the story is the cool part when you think about the team right now Michael was the original inspiration Kanye is the leader of the new school if you will and he helped create this platform for other Chicago creatives to be accepted in fashion and to have a voice leaders is

really important because they wanted a forerunners of it prior to 2002 there was a lull in the marketplace for cool brands in Chicago urban apparel was dying and people were looking for what was next thus the named leaders we were way ahead of the curve I mean it's called street wear now it wasn't called Street where Diego been around forever like a comic grandi just like he's been doing this before anybody Mikey gave me my first job and think I'm doing this 25 years so long he's been doing it 30 I broke into the sneaker

game in 1988 if you had told me then that I was still being here doing it I'd have told you you were crazy I wanted to be an attorney it really was me just walking into a store looking at shoes and I already knew all the shoes on the wall because I had been kind of studying I just didn't really know it I needed a job and my man Diego put me on in the space and so I was able to kind of switch out what I was selling I went from selling to selling clothes

fly was over 2003 in the old Harper's Court when leaders open like we were around the corner from each other I was a young guy I really didn't know what I wanted to do in this industry in this world and I walked into this store leaders kind of decided that that's where I wanted to work so I just started working there for free and I turned that into an opportunity and I ended up being there for ten years in Chicago somehow it created a culture where they just wanted to work together and they used each

other's platforms to elevate the entire group leaders is important Tony sports is important to Chicago culture that Tiger workshop is important to Chicago culture success is important to Chicago culture fashion geek is important to Chicago culture those are the curators of what the culture is today fashion geek has always been about color yeah this shoe right here is my reasonable doubt this is my jay-z album because this but I tell everybody it took my whole life to do when I first started the brand I was broke sometimes I don't have no way even to stay

I stayed on a big-boy couch dig Lloyd was a part of my brand's who start off big Lloyd that's my OG too you know I'm saying we've been friends for over 10 years Vic has always been a forerunner of what we've been doing from Chicago like he paved the way for Joe fresh goods our leaders Reebok reverse Jam we did this shoe in a collaboration between leaders Reebok and CTA which is Chicago Transit Authority the map of the sea J is on the so when you put two shoes together you get our transit now guys

we brought over time we something we love doing with your sneakers and fashion we starting a thing around that we grew up in and we still making these same things this is where we different from other cities we're all friends there's no competition we all talk to each other we all help each other we all promote each other it's a family deal I know in other cities that doesn't happen it really is fascinating to see kind of how they collectively work together but it's always a tribute to sport Sports is like one of the major

unifying factors on the earth I see a guy at a bar that comes from a completely different background as me but if we're both Kobe Bryant fans and Kobe hits that shot we're gonna hug each other and so winning a championship is like delivering a successful collection the concept behind a 3-1 - I thought was dope the fact that he mixed the Jordan 1 2 and 3 and 3 1 2 is like the original Chicago area code it was amazing joy bran challenged me to come up with something new so I told the team I

said yo can you put a aj1 on a 3 sole and when I get there I'm gonna finish the rest and so now I cooked up this shoe and one day we looked at you know the original Jordan 3 and added training elements to it straps you know in the forefoot and I think that that shoes done a phenomenal job of kind of evolving the legacy of Jordan Brand - when I came up I was the Nike head now kids wear everything I really love that everything is looked at as being cool and its own

thing and together that Chicago anyone in design who is at a superior level is always trying to get to Jordan level it's it's a phrase that you hear in everyday life this is Jordan level this is Jordan level people carry the MJ attitude in Chicago because you saw it you really saw the work ethic and knowing that you know nothing comes easy that you have to work for it we're doing from the worker to the boss down salute from the worker to the Box k1 from the worker to the boss myself from the worker to

the boss Chicago away bro you start the bottle goes to top you get Al Capone gasses baby [Music] [Music]