A couple of months ago on Kanye West’s blog a picture was shown of him drawing up shoes. Later on at this year’s Grammy Awards he was rocking some black and white sneakers, which nobody knew anything about. In an interview in NY Times’ “The Moment” he mentioned this: I had on a pair of Nikes, but I can’t talk about those because they’re not out yet. He said not out YET. So the public was sure it weren’t some special 1 of 1’s.
Two months later Kanye decided to unveil his mystery Nike shoe, the “Air Yeezy”. No additional info was released back then except for more detailed pictures of a new colorway. After this moment of clarity, more pictures popped up on the web of Kanye rocking more new colorways of the Air Yeezy. He also wore them more publicly like on television appearances and
in music videos. The hype was in full effect.
in music videos. The hype was in full effect.
Due to the lack of information being released, people started to analyse the sources of inspiration of the Air Yeezy. As you can see in the picture below, 3 important design influences have been used, presumably: the Ato Cow Hide Boot, the Bape Roadsta and maybe most importantly the Air Jordan III.
Why most importantly? Well, it was total overkill at the time with tons of Air Yeezy contact moments in the media. People started to get a little impatient. Nobody knew exactly when the shoes were going to be released. That also made some Chinese people impatient. So they started to do what they do best: copy the original and create fakes. And since they knew nothing more about the original Air Yeezy than you and me, they used the same inspiration chart to produce their copy. That’s why on the sole of a fake Air Yeezy it reads Jordan because they literally used the sole of the Air Jordan III.
Right now a fake version exists of every color-way ever shown in the media and even a couple of ones that the Chinese created themselves. This is what happens when a sneaker gets more hype than a Hollywood blockbuster. Did Nike intend for this to happen? Is it all part of their hype building process nowadays? I don’t know. Maybe. But what I do know is this: you can believe the hype just don’t believe you’re buying the real thing right now.
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sneakers hunter aka code314
07/11/2008 at 09:24
"Trendy or not ?
Here I Come
You Can't Hide
Gonna Find You..."