The Making of the Air Yeezy
Mar23/2009
Kanye West: I’ve always stressed my passion for design—and not just, “Oh, let me throw my name on this,” but to use my celebrity as an opportunity to jump into the design world—and in this case, to design my own shoe.
Mark Smith: Creative Dir. of Special Projects, Nike: I don’t really put my life in dates in a normal way. [Laughs.] So I couldn’t even say when everything went down, but one day I got a call asking me if I would work with Kanye on the project.
Kanye West: It was after the Air Force 1 “1 Night Only” event [in December 2006]. I sat there and drew countless forms of shoes, and a lot of them were inspired by Back to the Future, by the McFlys or whatever people call them—I just call them the Mags. All kinds of different ideas that stemmed from that and Robotech and all my other anime influences.
Mark Smith: What we wanted to do was really create something that was specific and unique to the two of us working together, so it wasn’t an entourage full of people on either side.
Click here to read the rest of the article on Complex.com
