How Football and Grime Music Inspired the UK's Sneaker Culture I Sole Origins

[Music] Terri's culture it's about wearing something that is expensive something that you can't really put a title on it's an unwritten rule it was around about 2002 2003 and we were looking for vintage added our shoes and somebody in Copenhagen seems to have a nice stache I guess on the plane that gets to Copenhagen maybe 11 o'clock at night and maybe one o'clock I find the shop and on the shelf there is a pair of Adidas Corsica these shoes are just ridiculous you wear I had not seen a pair for 20 odd years today I value them at one of the highest prices of any terrorist culture shoe the lights on in the bathroom and I can see there's a guy in the office at the back so I'm banging on the window he looks at me sees me goes what do you want I said I've got 3000 pounds in my pocket just come back tomorrow with an estate car and with all your money and we'll all drive to where I get them from so the next day we drive four hours north over bridges and bridges and bridges he takes me to this store he said right you can't come upstairs will bring down what you can buy and then I bought up 30 pairs brought them back to Manchester put them in the shop I'm within like two days I've sold every single pack it's only cool when nobody knows what it is and everybody knows what it is it ain't cool anymore there's still the mindset in the north that everyone does it will do the opposite that whole low profile gum Souls three-strike traditional analyst identity it's almost like it's in the water here the whole difference between London and the north of England is London has so much more diversity you walk around the streets you walk around the hood you walk around the ghettos of London and you will see everyone's wearing em axes if you're living and breathing in London there's no getting away from it the UK has really established itself as one of the most culturally significant countries in sneaker culture and when an entire culture is defined by their love of a shoe it also speaks to how important shoes are in general what is it about shoes is all about being unique and looking unique in the trainer scene in the UK trainers were seen as valuable as I would say jewelry London is exposed to different cultures coming over and bringing over different vibes and London purposely became the hub of experimentation from brands they were like okay let's drop this in London let's see if there's a taste for it and then we'll take it elsewhere generally we didn't work anywhere else but in London when we first opened up S&S sneaks and stuff it looked very very different to how you see it now we've had a couple of refurbishments just to uplift the space and make it look a lot more modern I think this thing on the rack for me right now is probably the reactor element 87 in Paris Fashion Week it was previewed on the catwalk and it literally brought the Internet everyone was sharing it everyone was talking about it and like it was a shoe that I wanted to put my foot straightaway I mean modern-day comfort and it's just completely new and clearly different back in the early seventies I would say London was like anywhere else in England but gradually as you move on throughout the 80s and the 90s they started creating its own identity they started diversifying their tastes being first on a trend first on the latest the trainers that were coming out but if you look at the UK as a as a whole there is definitely a north and south divide and the birth of sneaker culture in the UK if you really want to go back it was probably from of the terraces of football there's going to consistently be a difference when you look at northern England particularly because the primary thing that matters is football when I was growing up all we really did was hang around on street corners and play football or soccer is you Americans like to call it and a lot of the fashion and style that I grew up with was all experiential it was stuff that you saw at a local disco it was stuff that you saw a local football match you would see 15 year old kids wearing a really expensive sweater with a pair of jeans that were kind of semi flared at the bottom with a pair of flat gum sole suede added us trainers its street fashion in the truest sense of the word it wasn't celebrity led it wasn't music led it was genuinely coming from the very bottom end of society Gary Aston one of the biggest collectors of adidas one of the most knowledgeable people about adidas as a brand he's a rarity he's kind of like the Godfather of Adidas in the UK he finally got his own line adidas speciale which was based off of the history and the archives and his personal collection and if the brands gonna give the reins to anyone to tell a story for this segment of the population he's the guy to do it the idea of speciale was I wanted to create a range that's had a very traditional adidas identity and when they gave me the green light to do it I went away and I thought what does that even mean and I thought about where I grew up how I grew up and I found this kind of odd relationship between the very conservative German sportswear brand being adopted by these very aggressive and edgy British youth cultures and when you're talking about football style in the 1970s it was all about the black leather with the three white stripes you could say that you love adidas and that's great but if you only love easy it's time to learn a little bit more about the range I meet people all the time and they go yeah man I was there back in the day I was rocking my superstars and a mic not if you were growing up in the UK you were in the UK our superstar was the gazelle in the eighties when this style really came into its own and became this huge movement within the UK the people that went for all stood on terraces to watch the game and that's where the term terrace culture originates from it was kids who were dressing with extreme attention to detail the way they put the clothes together the brands they wore but it turned on its head because people worked a lot like tennis superstars going to the football match so terror is called to really change quickly from one thing to the next I first met Nigel Lawson about 20 years ago oh boy I got to know him when they were first starting out boy polloi is a derogatory term used by the upper classes about the lower classes it means the masses to Han drom the workers but the working classes really are the ones who invented terrace culture it was almost like it was working class style it was something subversive it was taking things that were not meant for kids like us and reappropriation that [Music] well here it is the best-selling body asks you in history it just changed the game because when I was a kid people wearing samba then all of a sudden everybody started wearing this white shoe without any strikes with perforation with the green heel top was pure white tennis shoe when you walk the streets of England you will probably see more Stan Smith's than any other individual shoe on feet this was such an iconic shoe to me as a kid I loved wearing it I love the shape of it to me as a kid in Stockport in 1978 I didn't know who the hell's down Smith was but I certainly knew what this shoe was I mean these clothes were made for millionaires to play tennis in Malibu they weren't meant for kids off the estate from the North West of England the only way they could get it was by stealing it the older guys would travel to Switzerland and Austria and Germany where there was very little security in the shops and they would come back with whole dolls full of expensive designer clothing it's these symbols of aspiration worn in the context of a quite a hard existence it's clean living on the difficult conditions that's the definition of mob culture it felt subversive to be wearing designer brands when you were signing on the doll you come through the 80s which have been a time of recession and glue you're talking about conservative government under mrs. Thatcher you're talking about factories closing down and then all of a sudden an acid house came along and bang the latest casuals and football hooligans have become rivers and we're going out to all-night parties and all that energy was kind of put into this very exciting time I was a b-boy I was breakdancer from 83 into about 86 you're talking about a trailer you wanted to go out and dancing all night zelich series were perfect they had these incredible pastel color wares and the second set X series use the technology called torsion and that was the go to shoe for us in house it was one of those happy accidents and us could never have been thinking about what was going to be happening on the m25 with warehouse parties if you're part of the terrace culture it's a multi-generational deal people love the shoes they know when something is one millimeter off it's not just about the way somebody dresses it's about the mindset that accompanies that there was little money and there was a lot of boredom so Klaus music and football became everything the birth of sneaker culture in the UK it was all about identity it was all about being a part of a movement but it was a different kind of culture London is a lot more experimental and I started separating itself from the northern parts of the UK you see this broader consumer here downstairs right now people are lining up for a padded Jordan 7 and there's just diversity in the people I grew up in some would say the hood in an era called Brixton back in the late eighties early nineties lots of immigrants lived there and we were a part of that cauldron of personalities we lived in a two-bedroom apartment and there was like four kids and every time I came home with the new pair of shoes my mom was kicking off but the thing is I started working when I was quite young I did my part for the family but then I saved up to go get my sneakers growing up I was definitely a lot more obsessive of what I wanted to have on my feet versus a lot of my friends everyone's getting the same stuff from the JD sports from the foot lockers from these chain stores I want something different and that's where my obsession really exploded first shoe I probably fell in love with was Jordan force I had a friend in primary school who got to visit America every single year he came back after the summertime wearing Jordan force and my mind was blown in 1989 Jordan had become the biggest athlete on the planet and when Jordan foras consistently come up in London as one of the first shoes that really kind of crossed over this is the colorway that really started this obsession and yet it's an obsession they spawned with no swoosh and the mesh and the colors just nothing like you man that minute you had that shoe on your foot everyone was looking Steve riding he's one of the original crooked tongues members he knows a lot about shoes one of the guys that I really looked up to when I was younger because he was wearing some crazy stuff even when I was a college I used to buy and sell shoes import it was a reselling thing I've always been fascinating what's new what's coming and that's always been a passion kind of nerdy a little bit I would say it was a time when internet was booming as well so I spend a lot of my time on these noobs think of websites tonight talk and sneaker comm we used to see sneakers on a website you right-click and save just have like discs or the pictures of sneakers they never ever see nice to write little articles about them just keep them you know keep them saved on floppy disk or wear and my friend Chris who are new around the way knew I was into trainers a whole crew was placing two shoes he was either gonna start this website that sneakers cook with your tongues and it be involved I was like you guys are nuts you're gonna spend time and money to a website about no sneakers watch try it you know it started off very small but then we noticed hits were just insane and it became one of the biggest things on the internet the same way that Americans view something like Nike talk for the European crowd crooked tongues really was that like a meeting place where people first went on the internet and talked while these limited edition stuff and could trade shoes and trade ideas and learn more about sneakers started searching the internet I started joining for him so I was a part of the crooked tongue forum I was like wearing wovens I was wearing donk s B's and people were like where are you getting these how you're getting these what are you doing to get these all these questions like coming up and I was just like what do you want me to say the internet lesbian best friend at the time when we first like returns I would say sneaker collecting was more about vintage finding the shoes that you wanted when you were younger or shoot you to have access to for us it was about trying to find holy grails they called down the Nike Dunk Glo SB London the London dunk arguably one of the Grails of London it's one of the rare shoes in the world I think it was a hundred pairs I guess probably the first on the issue that we got around and the color is very London gray miserable it's got the River Thames on the hill legend has it that foot patrol didn't even tell me but they were releasing it you had to know someone at foot patrol and quietly asked about it to get access to the shoe I got phone calls people were saying go down to foot patrol today ASAP they've just dropped the London done and I just wanted to get as many as I could for me it was all about having a kind of unique perspective on what you wore on your foot and wanting to stand out everything was like a new sneaker revolution a lot of storytelling that's what it was back then I think that's where sneaker culture was really really born brand started doing a lot more relevant drops purpose-built for the streets rather than for performance and then it mutated after that then it started going to the ghettos and the best way of expressing yourself is through your Footwear through your clothing and in London that's where the whole airmax culture came from where there's poverty people want to have the riches people wanted to wear the latest and greatest and you could only do that in London and Brian is the soundtrack to the hood crime music was the result of us has used growing up listening to us hear pop listening to music from our Caribbean cultures our African cultures throw in some jungle music and UK carriage and then you've got this kind of mashup of London's version of hip hop it was a voice for the kids in in indices it had a different sound at a UK sound out at UK feel the MCS are talking about UK stuff UK slang and it was the first time that UK rap culture has really had its own identity some of the most legendary grandmas have all been through here at some stage we'd have meetings here we decide people will write lyrics here that all happened here right here today we're seeing dry music getting more and more popular globally you talk about the skepta and the Wiley's and all these guys are lyrically so on point but this if it was the one that really kind of brought it into the limelight for the world I'm the Pioneer yeah facts before you dig the more you'll find out I'm from bold in East London I came up on pirate radio emceeing over heart beats and spitting at raves I grew up in this building I had my PJs set up there my friends would come up there I will teach a there with emcee and eventually I'll become an emcee as well I lived in this building when I was now saying when I made my first album you seen at the front of my first album I'm wearing air max that was like the hood uniform trainers were one of them things that I was always into as a kid people always like what trainers you got what training again that was always always a feeling I don't know a time when it wasn't gram continues to influence a lot of UK culture especially trainer culture grime and trainer culture has always walked hand in hand I've been collecting since I was in school we actually had to build a room in our house for myself and my wife's trailer collection London's always had a few trainers have been my signature like their Max 95 the Air Force Ones when they came that's the kind of trainers that people wore in areas where we come from before Graham was even full of it didn't come from the music was lovely around if you keep talking to people today everyone would tell you yeah and Max fools they see the love for air max here has never waned it has been consistent since it originally came out it's definitely in East Asia we made the shoot famous it wasn't the runners I just anyone American wear them but dizzy was really the first UK artist to have a formal collaboration with Nike when I eventually got asked by Lackey if I want to do collaborations may have been Drury was a no-brainer I never did the tongue-in-cheek which came out with my album and that one was real suave because the colors and all that the pink tango was a touched I was a genius is there little things of salt subtle fingers you know I mean when they came out I can't remember I'm much net cost we only did that 200 something again I was looked on eBay as one gone for eight grand which is mad because I didn't really keep any I was giving them away I feel like a idiot stars have changed over the years especially in London I think comfy is becoming more key but the north stick to their guns a bit more [Music] devious is parts of the fiber of culture music culture and popular culture came to adidas adidas didn't go through it so there's this very natural association with culture that's no amounts of markets in Spain can buy for you so when we created the first speciale collection we did the global launch in Manchester and it created quite a storm people who would not ordinarily queue up overnight were queuing up overnight Gary brought a recognition of beautiful simple classic shapes but to added us it hadn't been worn by these younger generations fact 5 1 y 3 the Hacienda the Hacienda was a nightclub in Manchester that was opened in 1982 and it closed in the mid 90s it was so much more than a nightclub it was a hub for culture it was a hub of acid house in the northwest of England so the shoe box here which looks kind of like a Miss Shippen coffin was actually in the shape of the Hacienda dance floor this is so incredibly thorough nobody would have expected y3 at that time to do a collaboration with the Hacienda it was taking something that was being produced for sports and athletics and pulling that into a completely different arena these different pockets of culture were taking this brand and grafting things onto it and making it their own the brands are not what people were while they're participating in culture brands are actually parts of culture [Music] you could ask me any question and I could give you a story on how I got those shoes when I was queueing for shoes I remember the people that were in front and behind me I remember the conversations I was having those people about the shoes about what they were up to about what was going on at that time in the US coal will radically shift from one year to another and it will shift by generation but things that are cool in the UK are forever cool [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Complex

Views: 497,382

Rating: 4.9466405 out of 5

Keywords: sneakerhead, complex, complex originals, sneakers, news, entertainment, current affairs, young man, culture, complex tv, complex media, grime music, dizzee rascal, gary aspden, mubi ali, dj target, sole origins, gary aspden adidas, gary aspden complex, gary aspden sole origins, adidas london, matt welty complex, dizzie rascal complex, dizzie rascal sneakers, mubi ali complex, mubi ali sns, dj target sneakers, sole origins london, sole origins complex, football sole origins

Id: wrkXw6ZHg-8

Length: 22min 31sec (1351 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 13 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/DonnyBraaaasco]

Those london dunks are siiiick