Author: Chris Mak
Footpatrol Launches is a brand new destination to get your hands on the latest and most coveted sneaker releases. Expect to see the best offerings from brands such as Air Jordan, Nike, adidas, YEEZY, New Balance & much more.
To get involved, download the app HERE, log in with your existing Footpatrol account / create a new account & stay tuned for the first launch on August 23.
A new destination for launches is set for release. Sign up to be the first to gain access.
Off-White founder Virgil Abloh and Nike join forces once again to continue their work with champions in progress.
Featuring striking patterns and silhouettes built for speed, Virgil delivers style and substance designed to inspire progress both on and off the pitch. Abloh salutes the athlete in progress, tapping into Nike’s rich heritage in athletics with their latest collaboration.
Enter the raffle below for your chance to buy online
White CLICK HERE
Black CLICK HERE
Blue CLICK HERE
To enter, you’re required to sign up via the above forms, these WON’T be available in-store to sign up on. Online raffle winners will have their win sent out to their PAYPAL registered address. ONE ENTRY PER COLOURWAY PER PERSON, multiple entries will not be considered.
Continuing their ‘Fearless’ collection for 2019, Nike have enlisted the help of the Parisian Maison Château Rouge for a new iteration of their Air Jordan 1 Mid silhouette.
Known for their vibrant colours and unique prints, co-founder Youssouf Fofana pays homage to his African roots. Bringing in the iconic powder blue UNC colour, MCR have put there spin on the design with African inspirations featuring heavily across the uppers panels with a series of debossed prints creating a subtle contrast across the upper’s overlays. Building a connection through colours, the rest of the upper has been finished in a range of softer hues of yellow alongside the powder blue with contrasting maroon colour blocks. Featuring hand stitched elements across the iconic Nike Swoosh and tongue, Maison Chaâteau Rouge have managed to create a unique take on this iconic silhouette.
For your chance to purchase in our London or Paris stores CLICK HERE
Introducing Lament, London based music group join us in the next installment of our Communi’T Project. Bringing an old school and individualistic sound to their music and having recently released their debut EP ‘In Fear of Faith’ we thought it was only fitting to work together in the next installment of this project.
With an individualistic sound, comes an individualistic eye for design including the message that follows.
To celebrate we also brought the dou in to sit and chat about how their journey started and where it’s beginning to lead for them now.
Bringing their ideas to life the Lament x Footpatrol ‘Communi T’ will be releasing on Black Friday the 29th November. Sizes range from S – XXL, priced at £30.
Lament welcome, before we get started, introduce yourselves and what you guys do for those who aren’t already aware?
Thanks, man. We’re music producers from the West Midlands, now based in South London. We make a kinda like dark, cinematic hip-hop.
I like the sound of that! Getting straight into it then, what made you both want to produce music? Was it something you knew from day one or was it more of a recent discovery?
It wasn’t really about wanting to produce, but more of wanting to make music and be able to make it instantly. We both grew up playing in punk-rock bands which was fun, it was probably one of the best parts in both our lives, but when you’re a fourteen/fifteen year old kid, a recording studio is expensive, and it still is even now. It was a hard thing for us to get our heads around back then as to why we would save up and pay for studio time with all this gear and not come out sounding like we’d gone platinum. We used to demo on a mic running through to a karaoke machine back then. We’d tape it to a mop stood up in a bucket in the middle of a room and let it pick up whatever it could. As soon as we discovered a microKORG and midi, it changed everything for us as we could get something that sounded good straight away, and we didn’t need any body help to make that happen.
By the sounds of it then your music has a really distinctive sound, where did you find your inspiration?
Life is the main inspiration. All of the good times, and especially all of the bad times. We’ve had a lot go down, so making music is a way to vent, react, say something that’s on your mind without giving that piece of you away. When you sit down and make something whilst you got a weight on your back, it lifts when a beat starts to come to life.
In a more literal sense, ironically, we still take inspiration from punk-rock. Punk-rock has got a good energy that we like to carry with us. We grew up producing on Reason, we still use it now, and because of how analogue it looks as if it still has the feel of real instruments and amps, so it’s easy to have that same feeling when we make music that we did when we were kids.
You said at the start that you would describe your music as ‘dark, cinematic hip-hip’ would you say there’s a lot of inspiration from film also?
Yeah, we take inspiration from movie soundtracks, too. There’s something powerful about a scene in a film without dialogue, but with a sound that amplifies the silence. We try to get that same feeling across parts of our beats.
The meaning of Lament is to express sadness and feeling sorry about something. Do you think that resonates with yourselves and your music? What made you chose your name?
It’s definitely something that resonates. It’s direct definition is something like ‘a passionate expression of grief or sorrow’, and with music and in life in general, we all tend to be drawn to the dark side of things from time to time. That’s what Lament is about. Being ok with things not being cool, being able to express that, and then being able to grow from that very act of expression, with the ultimate goal for all of us, to just be happy.
It’s good to hear that there’s a strong message behind the name and both of your outlooks on life. Moving on to your Communi T you designed we see your groups logo featured on the back what can you tell us about the design?
I’m not sure we’d call it a logo, we can’t even sit down and say ‘when we put this deep, metaphorical concept to MRE to bring to life for us…’ because it didn’t go down like that. We holla’d Ash and said, we’re gonna start making music again and we want you to design everything. Ash hit us straight back and was like ‘Yeah, I wanna get behind it…’ and that was that. He had some old ideas which we reworked together, and that’s how it went down, it was purely an aesthetic to go with the title of our first EP, which was called ‘In Fear and Faith’. What’s cool is, as we’ve settled into this project, it has indirectly, or maybe subconsciously, became something that has meaning to us now. This whole thing is about growth, within ourselves, as artists and every aspect of life. If we’re making music, everything’s a bit better, and to grow is to be better. That metal skeleton now symbolises like a resurrection to us, or something that can never die. There was a point where we were done with music and we left it alone for a long time, but the need to do it for ourselves is first and foremost made itself known to us pretty quickly.
Does the skeleton have a different meaning with and without the gasmask on? Is there a message you are trying to put across to your listeners?
Not at all, it’s just enhanced. That debut release (In Fear and Faith) was inspired by going down a bad path in life that you have no choice on. Seeing as you gotta go down it you may as well learn from it, and become better from it. The idea is that each record progresses in both its vibe and its execution. With all that in mind, the concept of a gas mask is to protect you from something you shouldn’t take in, and to take that skeleton out of darkness (from the In Fear and Faith artwork) and put him in the ‘real world’, or in our case, in the store, the skeleton wearing the gas-mask symbolises a climb from a dark place to somewhere more positive with a revised look on life, so the gasmask is a shield to any bull, and any industry politics its all about no-nonsense.
What can we see from Lament in the Future, is there anything you guys are excited to share?
We’d like to set up a live show at some point next year, but right now, maybe a couple singles with some features… We’ve started work on a few beats already and have some vocalists in mind who we’d like to hit up, but honestly, our only plan right now is to make music for us. There’s no business hustle, whatever’s next has gotta be organic.
And finally a question we like to ask all Communi T partners.. please describe Lament style in 3 words?
1. Need, 2. More, 3. Than, 4. Three
The YEEZY 500 Soft Vision features an upper composed of cow suede, premium leather and mesh. A rubber wrap along the midsole of the foot provides support and abrasion resistance with reflective piping details around the lace eyelets that add visibility in low-light conditions. The adiPRENE+ cushioning absorbs impact and optimizes rebound while a light rubber outsole provides traction.
The adidas YEEZY 500 ‘Soft Vision’ will be available In-store & online on November 2nd. For your chance to purchase in-store from Footpatrol London / Paris, enter the raffle HERE.
Last week we were invited up to Blackburn to visit the opening of the adidas SPEZIAL Blackburn exhibition.
Telling the story of SPEZIAL, Gary Aspden and adidas collectors from all over the globe assembled together to create the largest amount of adidas shoes under one roof, surpassing all other SPEZIAL exhibitions. Amongst this collection were some of the rarest and definitely the best adidas has to offer.
One of the stars of the event was the latest from the collection, the adidas SPEZIAL Blackburn edition. As part of this sneaker and the event, a special edition was created in association with the charity Nightsafe, an organisation at the heart of Blackburn and Darwen area. Named after the Lancashire town from where Gary Aspden grew up the Blackburn is the first of its kind. Featuring the colours from the Lancashire Rose, the shoe is constructed in a green suede upper and red stripes, navy sole and MOD Trefoil branded tongue.
As part of the exhibition, we found time to sit down with Gary and discuss just how this project came about.
Footpatrol – Hey Gary, how are you? We are here today at the Spezial exhibition at Blackburns cotton exchange. How does it feel to bring 1000s of adidas shoes home to Blackburn?
Gary Aspden – It feels especially good as I grew up in that area and I went to college in Blackburn – my roots and the experiences that surround them have always been a source of inspiration when I am designing the adidas Spezial range. The design team (graphic designer, photographer, etc) I work with on adidas Spezial are all based there. Growing up a lot of youths from Blackburn would travel abroad to pick up rare adidas trainers that weren’t available here. When I was a teenager a number of my trainers where purchased from those older lads who had been over to Switzerland and Austria. I am convinced that the highest concentration of adidas collectors in the world are based in the north of the U.K. It makes sense for a brand like adidas to invest in putting on an event in that part of the world and it’s especially bold to do something outside of a major city.
FP – I read in the Lancashire Telegraph the project happened by a chance meet in the streets of Darwen. How quickly did the project get into fruition after that?
GA – It took a little while and a lot of time and effort to be honest. Whilst out grabbing some lunch one day in Darwen I met a lady from Blackburn with Darwen Council and was saying to her that as much of my archive is sitting in storage in Blackburn they could perhaps think about using Blackburn museum as a venue for a permanent adidas footwear exhibition and charge an admission fee to raise money to support a local cause there. It would certainly attract a lot of visitors to the town but would be a big project that would require funding and commitment. On the back of that conversation I was invited to meet the heads of the council in the Town Hall to discuss the regeneration of Blackburn. The Council offered to help however they could but unfortunately, they currently have no money to fund these kinds of ideas/projects due to the cuts so that was as far as it got. I then met Laurie Peake from the British Textile Biennial through a local artist called Jamie Holman. We got the ball rolling on securing funding for footwear exhibition and then adidas opted to support the idea. Once we got the funding we then approached the other adidas collectors who have contributed to the exhibition – I have enough shoes in my archive to do this alone but we felt it would be better to get the very best from a handful of the U.K.’s biggest adidas collectors. We wanted to make sure that the content appealed to the most ardent adidas fans. The contributors have all shown tremendous goodwill and been fantastically supportive in loaning their shoes. I am convinced that this will be the strongest display of adidas shoes (particularly vintage models) of any exhibition we have done to date.
FP – One thing I love about the SPZL range is how well everything is thought-out, from materials and storytelling in the product right through to the stories in the campaigns. With your history with Blackburn i bet this was a dream project?
GA – Thanks for your generous words about Spezial and yes, it is thought out – very much so. That’s what makes Spezial what it is … the details don’t matter to many but nevertheless we set out to design it to appeal to the minority who are obsessed by those things. Ultimately a person needs to have a deep adidas brand knowledge to do what we do with Spezial – and to understand where adidas intersects with a wider culture beyond sport. Everyone who works on Spezial from myself to Gary Watson to Mike Chetcuti have an authentic connection to adidas and I believe that comes through and is reflected in the work we do. It is great to bring this exhibition to Blackburn and the reaction to that has been phenomenal. In the U.K. a lot of towns outside the major cities have had an especially rough time over the past decade. Since the decline of manufacturing, post-industrial towns and cities need culture more than ever – and culture, ideas and creativity are something that this country excels in. Culture will eventually drive commerce. I am very grateful that there were others in adidas who shared my vision to make this happen. adidas collectors on the whole (especially here in the U.K.) are quite a different breed to traditional ‘sneakerheads’. Those who collect OG adidas shoes are like connoisseurs and their motivations and taste are not dictated by resale value. Culture needs hubs and exhibitions like this offer a hub for adidas fans wherever they are from. Online forums are fine for communication, but I believe getting people with a shared passion together is much more valuable. Ultimately the appeal of the exhibition extends way beyond Blackburn with people coming from all over the U.K. and overseas. I have had messages from people who are travelling in to see it from Belgium, Holland, Germany … I even heard that someone is coming over from Australia for it. Essentially, we are hosting a hub for what is a much broader audience than the one that exists purely in Blackburn.
FP – Alongside the exhibition there is also the new adidas Blackburn SPZL launching. Can you tell us a bit about how that came to life?
GA – adidas wanted me to come up with a shoe that could be in some ways a successor to the adidas Manchester. I had been submitting city names since 2015 that were all rejected by the adidas Legal team but felt I might be able to get the Blackburn name across the line with the support of the local council there who I had met only a few months earlier. They were really helpful and with a bit of effort and a number of letters of permission we got the name approved.
FP – How does it feel being able to create a shoe for Blackburn? It must be a great feeling being from Darwen and making a shoe for them and for Nightsafe.
GA – Yes it feels good to acknowledge the town. Having said that, naming products can be challenging, and we are always open to ideas and suggestions. Last season a number of the product names were London related as it was shot there, and the story revolved around Robert Brooks.
As part of our Frequent Players, we’re proud to announce our next event. In conjunction with Highsnobiety, we’ll be joining forces with Mantra and taking over one of their nights as part of their upcoming residency at Phonox, Brixton.
As part of this residency, Mantra will be a weekly Saturday event with Skinny Macho, Tommy Gold and Bossy London playing on rotation every week.
For our night, we’re proud to announce Tommy Gold will be headlining our night along with Soulection’s Complexion and multi-instrumentalist and beat maker, Jael. Joined by Sharnie, we’ll also have an appearance from some very special guests in the form of a British rap collective who come with strength in numbers.
Look out for a special warm up mix from Tommy Gold coming soon..!
For more information or tickets, head over to mantraldn.com
We look forward to seeing you there!
adidas Originals and Kanye West resume their coveted collaboration this season, unveiling an all-new ‘Utility Black’ palette across the YEEZY BOOST 700.
Continuing Kanye’s love for a minimalist colour scheme, the YEEZY BOOST 700 ‘Utility Black’ features an upper composed of black suede, with premium leather and breathable mesh employed for the base. Finer details include 3M panels at the heel to keep you visible in low-lighting, while adidas’ hallmark BOOST midsole offers you cushioning comfort with every step. One more thing: a gum rubber outsole provides a contrasting hit of colour and ensures you won’t slip up on troubling ground.
Kanye West and adidas Originals’ collaboration continues with the release of the adidas Originals YEEZY BOOST 350 V2 ‘Antlia’ Non-Reflective.
The European exclusive 350 V2 ‘Antlia’ iteration follows on from the brand’s subtle YEEZY BOOST 700 V2 ‘Black’ release and coins its name from a star constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. The astronomy-inspired pair arrive painted in a two-tone, pale grey and soft pastel yellow hues across the sock-like Primeknit upper.
Just like its cohort of predecessors, the YEEZY BOOST 350 V2 features signature centre stitching down the upper, and plays host to adidas’ innovative technologies. With a midsole tooled with BOOST technology, each step is guaranteed to be just as cushioned as the last, and the pair’s Primeknit upper boasts the brand’s most advanced digital knitting techniques, ensuring foot-hugging comfort. Signing the silhouette off, the addition of 3M lacing provides glimmering detailing, just like the Antlia constellation itself.
The adidas YEEZY BOOST 350 v2 ‘Antlia’ is now SOLD OUT
