The Seveninch Paper - 4th Edition by The Seveninch Paper

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U L F H E R M A N N THE COLLECTOR / KA R H U A HISTORY OF KARHU AIR CUSHION B R I A N “ B I V ” J E N S E N IN THE MIND OF THE COLLABORATOR / RE E B O K 25 YEARS OF VENTILATION BROTHERS IN ARMS VS ADIDAS / SEVENINCH CHOOSEN KARHU / ASICS / PUMA / REEBOK

WELCOME

I LIKE THE WAY MY OWN FEET SMELL I LOVE TO SMELL MY SNEAKERS WHEN I TAKE THEM OFF CHRISTINA RICCI

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T H E S E V E N I N C H PA P E R

EDITORIAL NOTE Welcome to the fourth edition of The Seveninch Paper. This issue continues our quest of exploring what ’s so interesting about sneakers. We sit down with designer Brian “Biv” Jensen of Wood Wood to talk about his views on collaboration and footwear design . We also enter the confessional with a sneaker collector who tells anecdotes from the early 2000s. Read these interviews and lots more in the following pages. We will soon hit 2015, which marks ten years of Seveninch , which started out as a small blog back in March ‘05 at 7inch . dk . Time flies, and in the past decade, there certainly hasn’t been a decrease in public interest regarding sneakers. Quite the opposite . In fact , we’ve gone from being a bunch of people with a niche interest in footwear to what can truly be called sneaker culture . I hope you will like this fourth edition , and would love to hear your opinions about the paper. Write me your thoughts on paper@7inch . dk Greetings Joachim7inch / @ joachim7inch

P H OTO

Jonathan Mannion

Rasmus Weng Karlsen

MASTHEAD E D I TO R

Joachim Friis – paper@7inch.dk C O N T R I B U TO R S

Ulf Hermann – Nikolaj Hansson – Marco Pedrollo – Joachim Friis – Jonas Bie – Rasmus Weng Karlsen C O P Y E D I TO R

Magnus Jorem D E S I G N & A RT D I R EC T I O N

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ULF HERMAN N

W O R D S & P H O T O | ULF HERMANN

THE COLLECTOR

My passion for trainers, and especially vintage models, started around 2002 when I got into the whole casual movement. The casual culture in Copenhagen at the time was mostly about Burberry, Stone Island, and Henri Lloyd, paired with some white Superstars or Lacoste trainers to finish off the uniform. My interest went further than this, so I started searching the Internet for new brands – mostly rare trainers you couldn't find in Denmark. At the time, the places to buy trainers here in Copenhagen were Snaps and Wood Wood, or Rude for when you wanted cheap, discounted adidas. While online shops like Footpatrol, Harputs, and Crooked Tongues all had great stuff, eBay was always the biggest source for me. When I first tried eBay, I was looking for a pair of Forest Hills. During my search, though, trawling through thousands of eBay pages, I remember discovering all these other sneaker models I'd never seen or heard of before. When I finally got the Forest Hills, I was already looking for other models. I constantly got new "holy grails" to go after. I guess my motivation was to keep on searching and looking – and you never knew what

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would show up. It was great! Changing or buying trainers with other nerds on forums was also a great opportunity, and spending time translating a message for a seller from France or Germany that had that very special pair of trainers that you wanted to buy was also part of it. German eBay especially was full of amazing models back then and not many sellers had a clue what they were selling. I remember buying some OG adidas Berlin in nearly new condition for around 10 euros. A few weeks later I passed them on for £150. Good times. I think at one point I had 150-170 pairs, most of them vintage models in wearable condition, and all in my size, of course. I've had nearly the whole OG City Series, many of the OG American City runners from the 80s, a lot of different indoor models, etc. The rarest pair I ever owned was the mysterious adidas Cord, which I picked up from a Japanese site. Same shape as adidas Jeans but in brown colors. At the time, it was a fact among collectors that only one of the Gallagher brothers, Kerso from Glasgow, and one other collector had a pair of these. Adidas started re-releasing many of its old models

from the Originals series in those years, but I was never really impressed with the ones they came out with. The materials were poor, the shapes were wrong compared to the OG´s, and it just wasn't the same feeling to have a "Made in Taiwan" pair in your hands compared with the old classics made in Europe. Also, the prices on eBay went up. Many people started discovering that vintage models were going up in popularity among football casuals and collectors. I felt that I'd seen all the models that I wanted, so I started a clear-out, selling them for decent money. I still have around 30 pairs left of reissues and vintage. To me, the whole passion for vintage trainers was about standing out from the crowd with a pair you couldn't just buy at the nearest sports shop. It was about the materials they used, like real suede, about the nice shapes, and also that many of the trainers had been made in West Germany and Yugoslavia, countries that don't exist anymore. That brought some proper history to the trainers. But most important was the whole chase for all these rare and strange models. All the days and nights on eBay. Good memories for sure.

P H OT O | KARHU ARCHIVE

W O R D S | JOACHIM FRIIS

A H I ST O RY O F KA R H U A I R C U S H I O N

THE FRESH FINNISH AIR Ask the average person, and Nike was the first brand to use AIR in its sports shoes. But that’s not entirely true. A Finnish sportswear brand by the name of KARHU (the Finnish word for bear) played around with the idea of an air-cushioned shoe in the early 70s. Seppo Saaristo, who was the head of the KARHU footwear team, thought that runners needed a more cushioned shoe, one with a cloud to absorb the pressure that was directed at the lower part of the legs during running.

After several prototypes and thorough testing together with University of Jyväskylä, the first Air Cushion model saw the light of day. It was named Karhu Champion, while the Karhu Air Cushion trademark was patented in 1976 – a whole year before Nike came out with its “Air” system. Karhu recently rereleased one of their classic models from the Air collection. Karhu Albatross which initially was launched in the early ‘80s can now again be found.

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W O R D S | JOACHIM IDESTRUP FRIIS

P H O T O S | RASMUS WENG KARLSEN

BRIAN “ BIV ” JENSEN

I N T H E M I N D O F T H E C O L L A B O R AT O R

It’s a gray November morning, I’m in a courtyard in Nørrebro in Copenhagen, where Wood Wood has its headquarters. I’m here to meet with the label’s designer Brian “Biv” Jensen for a talk about their approach to sneaker collaborations and how he feels about the state of sneakers in 2014 - 2015. THE SEVENINCH PAPER N O 4

J OAC H I M: When was the first time you collaborated with another label on sneakers?

J OAC H I M: Got a special process when entering a collaboration?

like something you could go down to your local sports shop and buy in the early 90s.

B I V: We were approached by adidas in 2004, when they asked if we would come to Paris. They had something they wanted to discuss with us. Back then, we were a very small company, and it seemed a bit exaggerated to take three people to Paris for some meeting we didn’t know what was about. I remember we called back and asked, “Is it okay that only one of us comes?,” the answer being “We’d like all three.”

B I V: It varies quite a bit, actually. It all depends on the brand, the model, and the collection we work with each time. There is no recipe. Sometimes we develop an independent concept, other times we can, if suitable, also use our current collection as a focal point.

So we went down there and met with Dean, who was the global footwear manager of adidas then. We sat at a small cafe and talked about this project they were launching called adicolor. He asked if we want to join the project and make a shoe. It was a huge thing for us at the time – a boy’s dream – but we tried to act cool and thanked nicely. In truth, we were ecstatic. As soon as the meeting was over, we headed around the corner, where we cheered and hugged each other – we then went out and partied and had a blast.

B I V: As a rule, we don’t enter anything if we don’t find it interesting. It’s important that the brand we work with trusts us and gives us the freedom necessary to make something good. We have turned down a number of projects that didn’t fit with our direction, or if the timing was bad, or if we simply found the project irrelevant.

The Clarks shoe was something else entirely. It is a good example of how the concept of a shoe collaboration can emerge from the same basic idea as the collection we’re developing. We started working on our SS14 collection ‘Utopia’ with a trip to Paris, where we visited Versailles and Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye. The architectural and historical contrast between the two places inspired us – the break between the new and the old. This model is precisely the combination of something very traditional and something brand new, fitting in with the overall concept of the collection.

But those shoes did mean a lot to us. adicolor was a large-scale PR project on their part, I think it was the biggest story to come out of adidas that year. They’d put a lot of resources into it, and we were quite aware that we would use this cooperation to promote our own brand. We really felt that we were outsiders in the project – the other partners were much more established stores, brands and characters – but that this was our chance to be exposed globally. It was the first time we messed around with shoes collabs.

B I V: Adidas ZX 9000 (which was part of the adidas a-ZX project) was a very immediate and fast way to work. All the Consortium shops were invited down to Herzogenaurach, where you worked directly with designers from adidas, and with selected materials and colors on the spot. It was a short process, a liberating and unpretentious way of working. To us, it was just about making a shoe that we liked and looked cool. The idea was to create an authentic shoe true to the time of its original launch. It was important that it didn’t look too “designed,” but

J OAC H I M: H ow m u c h fr e e d om d o y ou h a v e a s d e s ig n e r s ?

J OAC H I M: What was the thinking behind such different models as adidas ZX 9000 and the brand-new Clarks model?

J OAC H I M :

What is a good collaboration?

B I V: Something needs to emerge between the two partners that wouldn’t have if they were working on their own. I like when you can push the envelope on what the brand in question normally does, and sometimes we make proposals knowing that a no is likely. Sometimes that succeeds, sometimes not. And sometimes you reach a compromise that still packs some punch. I think a lot of people contact us with a certain idea about what Wood Wood is and does, but if we can surprise them – and ourselves – things do get more interesting.

Our collaboration with Disney, released recently, was a good example of how you can push at the edges of a brand’s identity. We worked with Mickey Mouse in a way that we didn’t believe their legal department would accept, but it did, resulting in a surprising and original project.

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TIMELINE

ADIDA S ADICOLOR

NE W BAL ANCE 670

C O N V E R S E C H U C K T AY L O R

APRIL 2006

NOVEMBER 2007

O CTOBER 2008

ADIDA S ZX 9000

ONITSUK A TIGER XC ALIBER

A D I D A S R O D L AV E R

O CTOBER 2008

AU GUST 2009

SEPTEMBER 2009

N I K E LU N A RW O O D T Z

A D I D A S G A Z E L L E V I N TA G E

C L A R K S TAW Y E R

J A N U A RY 2 0 1 0

DECEMBER 2012

M A RC H 201 4

I don’t spend much time looking back at previous projects, but when I have the sneakers in front of me, it’s obvious that I would have made different choices today.

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I N T H E M I N D O F T H E C O L L A B O RATO R

On the other hand, there are times when you don’t want to toy with the original design too much, for instance with the ZX 9000. In that case, we only wanted it to look like a classic adidas shoe, and we aimed specifically for that authentic look. If I’m gonna choose which of our collaborations succeeded the most, it would probably be Lunarwood, where we were involved from the very start in the idea and development phase. The model was a kind of successor to the Nike Wildwood, and we’ve always been very fond of Nike’s ACG line. So that was a good start. And besides the product itself, we were involved in the presentation, imagery, posters, packaging, etc. We went full circle, and in that sense it was truly a solid project. You might say that these collaborations are a kind of playground for us. We have our own label, which has more of a defined direction, and when these special projects emerge, we like to do things that wouldn’t normally fit into our framework. J OAC H I M: There are so many brand collaborations these days. Do you ever feel things have gone too far?

B I V: I think these kinds of collaborations can be relevent, but no doubt, there are way too many irrelevant co-branded projects, where the presence of two labels often feels like an empty sales argument rather than there being something interesting or original about the product itself.

On the other hand, there are some bigger and longer-lasting projects where the work goes deeper, for example Nike’s Gyakusou line. Here, Nike gives designer Jun Takahashi access to some resources and technical possibilities, and Takahashi delivers fresh ideas and creative energy. In my view, that’s a good example of a collaboration done right. Besides, the words “collaboration” and “design” are often misused. Mostly, it’s all about a store that gets allowed to select some colors and materials for a shoe that they then put their name on. That’s not designing a shoe. Back in the day, stores would also get their own versions of shoes – SMU’s, as they’re called. A long history exists of big chains having their own versions. There’s nothing new about that. There just wasn’t that much attention drawn to their being designed by a happy intern, or

that the boss really liked purple. There might have been a little tag saying “Footlocker exclusive” or something to that effect. Many of those models were actually somewhat underestimated. It reminds me a little of the time when there were still different models and colorways in different markets, which I thought was fantastic. I loved to travel and find fun and different shoes in regular stores. J OAC H I M : Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently in your projects? B I V: I don’t spend much time looking back at previous projects, but when I have the sneakers in front of me, it’s obvious that I would have made different choices today. The adicolor shoe is perhaps a good example. It was the first time we were allowed to design a shoe – I say “allowed,” because it really felt that way at the time. But apparently we thought we needed to insert all kinds of ideas at once. I actually don’t even think we looked at it objectively, we didn’t really assess whether it was a great shoe. There’s way too much going on: embroidery, embossing, strange colors, assymmetry, and whatever else. It’s fun to look back at – but for me it’s mostly a souvenir from a certain time.

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A DI DAS

S E V E N I N C H PA P E R

P H OT O S | JONAS BIE M O D E LS | JOACHIM PALSBY (SCOOP MODELS), VICTOR PALSBY C U R AT E D BY | JOACHIM FRIIS R E T O U C H | WETOUCH

B RO T H E R S I N A R M S VS ADIDA S

ADIDAS N I G O C O A C H W B / ADIDAS S P Z L T- S H I RT / ADIDAS M I C R O PA C E R

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ADIDAS N I G O V A R S I T Y / ADIDAS PA L A C E H Y P E R J O G G E R / ADIDAS Z X 6 3 0

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ADIDAS Z X 4 2 0 - Q U O TO O L E

ADIDAS N B H D Z I P P E R H O O DY / ADIDAS N B H D S W E AT PA N T / ADIDAS S P Z L H A N D BA A L S P E A Z I A L / ADIDAS L E I S U R E JAC K ET / ADIDAS T U B U L A R R U N N E R

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ADIDAS S P Z L L E I S U R E J A C K ET / ADIDAS N B H D T RA C K PA N T / ADIDAS Z X 5 5 0

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ADIDAS A D I DA S S P Z L B E C K E N B AU E R J A C K ET / ADIDAS S L I M J E A N S / ADIDAS FO R U M H I

ADIDAS N I G O VA R S I T Y / ADIDAS ZX 420 - Q U O T O O L E / ADIDAS N I G O C O A C H W B / ADIDAS H A N D BA L L S P EZ I A L S P Z L / ADIDAS N B H D T E E

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ADIDAS N B H D T RA C K PA N T / ADIDAS T U B U L A R R U N N E R

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ADIDAS S P Z L B E C K E N B AU E R J A C K E T / ADIDAS S P Z L B E C K E N BAU E R PA N T S / ADIDAS Z X 5 5 0 ADIDAS PA L A C E G OA L I E J E R S E Y / ADIDAS ZX 420 PA L A C E H Y P E R J O G G E R / ADIDAS Z X 8 0 0 0 B RA V O

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ADIDAS N I G O H O O DY / ADIDAS D O W N JA C K ET / ADIDAS S A M BA

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REEBOK

P H O T O S | REEBOK ARCHIVE

W O R D S | NIKOLAJ HANSSON

25 YE ARS OF V E N T I L AT I O N

Loads of technological and social quantum leaps happened in the first year of the 90s. 1990 saw the launch of both the World Wide Web and the Hubble Space Telescope. In South Africa, Nelson Mandela was freed from prison. In Britain, the premiership of Margaret Thatcher came to an end. However, devoid of whatever your history book may be telling you, something else quite significant also took place in 1990, something vital to sneaker-heads, aesthetes and runners alike: th e r elease o f R eeb o k ’s V entil a t or . Having already made its clear mark in the minds of the common man through the 80s with the Pump and the Workout, Bolton-rooted Reebok throttled into the new decade with a renewed focus on the integration of technological

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features in sneaker silhouettes. The Ventilator was a product of Reebok’s collaboration with renowned athletes Ed Eyestone and Arturo Barrios, who longed for a shoe that was lighter and faster than what was already on the market. Granted, the Ventilator’s predecessors from the Reebok archives did show an increased use of technological details as a main focal point, but it wasn’t until the introduction of the Ventilator that Reebok truly started showing its potential within this field. One could imagine the shoe as an outcome of a brainstorming session at the Reebok studio, encapsulated by three keywords: Breathability, lightness, and comfort. The ventilated side panels ensuring airflow through the shoe and a breathable mesh upper inspired the shoe’s

name. To ensure a lightweight piece of footwear, Reebok utilized an EVA midsole, while the visible arch-support combined with a Hexalite mid-sole provided a high level of comfort. Reebok had created something that would prove dominant in the sneaker industry for years to come, with a silhouette bordering the lines of functional runners and aesthetically appealing footwear for everyday use. And that formula is the exact reason why the Ventilator, celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2015, is just as relevant today as it was back in 1990. Because the formula of the Ventilator is what everyone basically wants: comfortable footwear with technical add-ons for increased support, paired with flawless design. Here’s to longevity, here’s to the Ventilator.

T H E V E N T I L ATO R

One could imagine the shoe as an outcome of a brainstorming session at the Reebok studio, encapsulated by three keywords: Breathability, lightness, and comfort.

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SEVENINCH CHOOSEN

P H O T O S | BRIAN BUCHARD

A R T D I R E C T I O N | MARCO PEDROLLO

D ON’ T GE T THE BLUE S

KARHU A R I A / PUMA S U E D E / REEBOK V E N T I L ATO R

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SEVENINCH CHOOSEN

A STRIKE OF WHITE

ASICS G E L LYT E I I I / PUMA D I S C B L A Z E / REEBOK V E N T I L AT O R S U P R E M E

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SEVENINCH CHOOSEN

SHAD OWS OF BL ACK

PUMA D I S C B L A Z E / ASICS KAYA N O / REEBOK V E N T I L ATO R / PUMA A R I A L E V O LU T I O N

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SEVENINCH CHOOSEN

T H E P O W E R O F N AT U R E

ASICS G E L S I G H T / PUMA B L A Z E O F G L O RY / PUMA X HOUSE OF HACKNEY T R I N O M I C R 9 6 8 / REEBOK V E N T I L ATO R

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