I’ve never paid a great deal of attention to miadidas before, because it always came off like a weaker, under-utilised rival for NIKEiD, but the photo print app is some next level entertainment. It works like Instagram and the end result is solid — the open mesh Flux didn’t do a lot for me when it debuted because it sailed too close to the Roshe in my eyes but the wave printed nylon variations had me hyped. I’ve heard that numbers in the low thousands and IG-style filter systems are going to weed out any schemes to create some genital pattern one-offs. Shoe collaborations are duller than they’ve ever been these days — promiscuous and biased brand behaviour has meant every weekend is strewn with conceptual limited edition mediocrity — and this technology means that the individual can create a shoe that’s a lot better. Seeing as I’m a huge nerd, I lazily chucked a repeat print of a German catalogue page from 1990 onto the shoe — those Torsion inclusions in Kays catalogue back then were cause to beg to pay weekly for some ZX 8000s and the bashy rudeboy days of the technology deserve to be depicted in OTT fashion. From a Q&A with the mighty Peter Moore for a forthcoming project, I was unaware of how much the Torsion designs underachieved in America — they were a driving force in EQT’s creation because Moore really disliked the look of the system. We Brits always seemed to love those early creations and I believe that I’ve created the geekiest shoe ever made in its honour.
I’m taking part in a discussion this Thursday on documenting youth culture with Ewan Spencer, Nina from What We Wore/The Cut (whose book drops soon with an intro by the don Ted Polhemus) and Clive Martin from Vice. There’s more information on it right here.
If you’re UK-based and struggling to find anything good on Netflix, Matt Wolf’s Teenage is 77 minutes well spent, bringing some visuals to some of the more interesting tribes explored in Jon Savage’s book. Having failed to attend a screening last back and hunted for another showing to no avail, I was surprised that somewhere that’s often so bereft of anything I want to watch was housing it. Like the curse of the Amazon Prime trial, nobody ever cancels Netflix on time — even if they DIY tattoo the final free date on their hands and eyeballs — so you may as well watch something that’s worth a month’s payment on its own.
GWARIZM 