And the Roshe was something you just did in your spare time that nobody at Nike had briefed you on?
Correct. Yeah, it was something I was passionate about. I was kind of joking with you earlier. I do a lot of meditation and I’m in that space and I’m like, I just want to do something simple, something that I was looking for. It looked like a complete gap in the market when I came into Nike. I think at that time it was the Skyline or the Air Max Command or something—that was all there was to wear. I was just looking for something more simple, deconstructed. So yeah, I just made that.
Maybe it’s easy to reminisce and be nostalgic, but that was such a fun time in sneakers, too. I remember chasing down those first Roshes and that feeling of wearing them. I don’t know if you advise with socks or without, but just: college summers, Roshes, no socks. “Calypso,” “Iguana,” all those colorways. That was so much fun.
Yeah, it was, it was a blast. Because the ability to make something, you’re like, I want this to just kind of go across the spectrum. I want everyone to be able to afford it. I wasn’t even aware of the hype situation then, but it was just something that people could be a part of—anybody. So it was a very fun experience, and I would say the way it went out, it kind of helped it, in the fact that people didn’t know what to do with it in terms of retail. So it was on sale at Nordstrom Rack, and then there’s lines at 21 Mercer and you’re just like, what is going on?
I’ve heard stories about people previewing the line and retailers just not even being remotely interested in the Roshe.
I mean, that was the same with the PLMs. Some of them were like, “No one wants a deconstructed shoe. That doesn’t make sense.” A lot of people didn’t really know what to do with it, and I think that’s why it did go to places like the Nordstrom Rack. But just that in itself, it made people want to hunt it, and it created all those people looking for it.
Is there a moment where it felt like the Roshe really took off?
Probably the only personal point of view of this is I was over in Vietnam and they were literally building factories to start making the thing. All these buildings are for this shoe.
Factories dedicated to the Nike Roshe run?
Just to the Roshe Run. And I was like, “How many are being made?” And at that point, they’re already telling me it was at 40 million. And I’m just like, “Oh my God, this is a huge monster.” And they’re like, yes, this thing is, we can’t make them fast enough. And that’s kind of when it set in and then just, you start traveling and seeing it on every single person’s foot. Just kind of tripping out a little bit.
Do you count in your head how many times you see the shoes you’ve designed out on the streets?
Well, I think working at Nike, you start to lose count. It’s just a big company that has the global reach that at that point, it was everywhere. But I think with the 270 and some other—all the Air Max models—it’s just you start to see it a lot. It’s a cool feeling to be able to see people are into something.
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