A Grime Blog Veteran Steps Inside The World Of Cozy Footw…

Editor’s Note: Sometimes, we like to do random things at Complex UK because… why not? Laura Brosnan, aka Hyperfrank, has a long history of exploring subcultures, most notably grime, via the mediums of photography and journalism. Earlier this year, Hypes flew out to Florida to delve into the world of golf and, earlier this month, they flew to LA to step inside the scene of cozy footwear with UGG. Dive in below for another colliding of worlds.

What do you do when UGG and Post Malone join forces? Well, you drop everything and fly 10 hours, from London to Los Angeles, to make sure you get a front-row seat at the launch party of the year, of course! The event brought back UGG’s renowned Feel House, which the brand calls “a multi-community space dedicated to making self-expression comfortable for all.” And this time round, there was no exception.

The Feel House space was a full-on immersion into their cozy-meets-culture universe. Post Malon performed on the night, and it was an intimate showing of his new sound and vibe. Before and after Post had us in awe, DJ Odalys kept us on our toes—playing everything from J Hus to Amapiano—while bespoke UGG customisations from Clint Orms of a limited-edition camo boot co-designed by Post Malone, arcade games, café treats and handcrafted cocktails kept a smile on everybody’s face. It was genuinely like stepping into a world where comfort and creativity collided. Don’t even get me started on the warm cookies they were giving out. Whew!

The next day, we were treated to an exclusive live recording of the Throwing Fits podcast with guest fashion designer Reese Cooper. This was clearly no ordinary pop-up—it felt like more of a love letter to creativity and unapologetic self-expression. UGG have come a long way from their early noughties heyday. The original style and silhouette of their iconic shearling-lined boot were a staple look. Born in California in 1978, by Aussie surfer Brian Smith, the iconic boot started as a nod to comfort and SoCal beach culture. By the ‘80s, they were a surf-shop staple, though not without their doubters.

Fast-forward to today, and UGG is rewriting the rules and leading the charge of staying true to their core values of comfort and quality but also not afraid to experiment in other directions, allowing them to break new audiences. Through bold collaborations with designers like Telfar, Jeremy Scott and Shayne Oliver, they’ve transformed the classic boot into a streetwear statement. Not to mention their sold-out collaboration with skatewear brand Palace.

While I waited for my custom camo UGGs at Feel House, I had the chance to speak with Brand President Anne Spangenberg and VP of Global Marketing Carole Diarra, to discuss the concept behind Feel House, the importance of authentic storytelling, and the bold ideas behind their renowned collaborations.

COMPLEX: LA is an integral part of UGG’s heritage. What does it mean to be back here for the Feel House project?

Anne Spangenberg: It’s incredible to be back here. Our first Feel House was in LA, and the brand started on the beaches of LA, so that idea of California lifestyle—the ease, the comfort—is something that’s really, really important to the brand. And so to be back here and to do it in this way, where we’re really celebrating a creative like Post Malone and celebrating the community and connecting with the community while we’re here, it’s just amazing. Originally, Feel House was more of a PR opportunity for us, and now it’s a place for people to meet, a place for consumers to buy products. It’s a place to tell our story, and a place to invite creatives in to be a part of our community and our brand.

Casting Post Malone as the face of this campaign was a surprising choice, but a really cool one—it really works. The community of people around him have really tapped into it, too.

Anne Spangenberg: We were really excited and honoured to be partnering with Post this year. It all started from a very authentic place; he’s been a genuine lover of the brand for so long and has worn the brand consistently for so long. And, last year, we had a very special moment with him. So, he reached out to our team because he’s a big fan of camo and camouflage material, and he had this idea to have camouflage on a pair of UG boots. The team was able to create a custom pair of camo UGG boots just for him, and he wore them everywhere! He lived in them. He even wore them to the Super Bowl—he posted on Instagram about it. It was really just out of his genuine love and passion for the brand. We then thought about how we wanted to approach this season: we wanted to lean into talent and creatives who have their own point of view, who consistently show up being their most authentic self, who are not afraid to reinvent themselves. Not afraid to be exactly who they want to be at that moment.

Carole Diarra: Post is in the middle of a big reinvention of himself and his music, to really show that he can’t be defined, to show that he checks all the boxes and none of the boxes at the same time. And we found that really special. We really connected with his authenticity and just him being who he is; we also wanted to lean into working with Post. And then, once we worked with him, we realised: well, he has an incredible community around him, and when you talk with anybody that works with Post, they all talk about how wonderful he is, how caring he is with his own community. And so as we set about this partnership. It was really important for us to work with his community, and that included his director, as a part of the campaign that we did, his photographer, his stylist. We made the campaign come to life, then that led us to Feel House and as we thought about how to bring that element of community that Anne was talking about into the Feel House. It was a perfect opportunity to have it curated by Post, with his set of community really interjected throughout the experience.

Anne Spangenberg: One of the things that we really care about is this idea of authentic storytelling. And that’s one of the things, as Carol mentioned, about Post: he’s an authentic storyteller, and consumers really want to understand the story behind the brand, the creative, and those sorts of things. I love the fact that when you walk through the Feel House, you can see little elements of our storytelling, and you can see the elements of the host’s story as well.

How has the reception been to new style offerings that aren’t typically seen as the classic UGG style? For example, I absolutely love the recent Palace and Telfar collabs.

Anne Spangenberg: The way we think about it from a product perspective is we call it Icons Reimagined. It’s this idea of taking something that is really familiar to our consumers who have known and loved us for years and doing it in a different way. It could be Post’s boot that we did in camo, or it could be the Palace tasman shoe. It’s like we’re looking at something and saying, “We started with a boot, and then we made it short, and then we made it mini, and then we made it ultra-mini, and then we put a platform on.” On the men’s side, the idea of the tasman but then putting the guard on it and making it weatherised shows an evolution and reinvention of our icons in new and different ways, which could appeal to everyone from a young basketball or football player to high-end fashionistas. And that’s the gift of the breadth and the depth of the brand.

What does it mean for UGG to push boundaries in men’s fashion, and how do you envision the next phase of this journey impacting your broader brand identity? 

Carole Diarra: I’m glad you mentioned this because we’re really excited about it. It’s one of the things that we feel like we’ll continue to push at the brand, embracing creativity and embracing what our consumers expect and what they’re looking to do, which is expressing themselves through fashion, through music and art. Guys are really open to new silhouettes and new brands that maybe they weren’t open to in the past, and this allows us to come in with an offering that feels unique and authentic at the same time. We’re so excited about pushing those boundaries, but also just giving them the same reassurance that they expect from us, which is the comfort, the feel and the high quality of the product. Taking our heritage and combining it with some of the fresh injections, we feel like that’s a winning recipe.

Anne Spangenberg: I think it’s really interesting, too, in this moment of self-expression, that our men’s consumers are adopting products that maybe we made for women, and they just love it. Pumped is a perfect example of that. Our consumers in China and Korea were the first ones to pick it up and fell in love with it, and we started seeing it on the streets. Our consumers are wearing our product in ways that feel right to them. The weatherised hybrid was a male shoe that the girls in China picked up first, and now both genders are wearing it. So that idea of finding the way that you want to build your outfit and expressing yourself in a way that is meaningful and reflects your life, that’s something we just love.