The Tastemakers Society

I already showed you the Adidas Originals, House Party, commercial now here’s the full video of the poker game between Young Jeezy and Kevin Garnett.

In celebration of the 2oth anniversary of there Pump shoe Reebok has decked out a 3,000 sq ft, two story art gallery into a pop-up shop. There will be limited edition t’s and hoodies avaiable as well as sneakers and of course limited edition Pumps for your childhood pumping dreams. The pop-up shop will be up until Dec. 14th at 169 Bowery, nr. Kenmare St.

To celebrate their adidas superstar sneaker, adidas came up with the left right project. The project consisted on having a pair of really large superstars and having them custom designed by two design/artist studios. Adidas separated the sneakers giving the left shoe to the west coast for Upper Playground artist Sam Flores to customize, then the right shoe was given to the east coast team, Surface2Air (Daniel Jackson, Alexia Stamatiou and Gordon Hull), both teams where both given 3 days to complete their designs. So it was like the Left Coast vs. the Right Coast. When they were both done they had the shoes transported to Venice Beach, CA for the showdown. You decide on the winner.

Brothers are a wonderful thing, a connection I’m envious about and will never have because I have a sister. In history there has been some great brotherly duo’s, the Mannings, Cohen’s, Wright’s, and Bush’s, well maybe not the Bush’s but you get my point, brother’s can go on to do some great things. And on their way to becoming another great brother combo is Chad and Evan Birenbaum founders and designers of new shoe brand 100 Styles and Running. They have clean designs and make a comfortable fit using high quality material, like walking on air. Chad (pictured above), the oldest had a chance to answer a few questions for me, read up on what he had to say about brotherly fights, favorite movies, being a cops son and his connection to the show The Wire.

Oh, how the eco roam. El Naturalista makes eco-friendly shoes they even have a section on their website dedicated to showing you what characteristics and materials goes into their shoes. The shoes are dyed with natural colors (of course) and they try and use nothing but recycled materials. Something that helps stand El Naturalista out from other eco shoe companies (aren’t many I believe) is they’ve even created a charity, happily called the Charity Project Atauchi, in which they work with non-profit organizations that are providing international development aid. El Naturalista has a thing about videos as well, they apparently like to use them to help get their point, message, and ideology across. Well, the videos are interesting for a shoe brand to use, but the video about trying to describe a so called “naturalista” is pretty corny, but hey its different they just making someone read your company philosophy. The other video is better because it just goes into one of their charity projects in some detail. Both videos are after the jump, the first is corny but it’s not even 2 minutes so you’ll be ok.

The video goes a little into the world of sneakers and the culture that it’s grown into over the years. It talks with “sneaker freakers” (the sneaker collectors) and sneaker retailers. The video helps give a little light into why sneakers can be so important to others, what are some of the most important sneakers to collect and even wild “sneaker freaker” stories, like paying a homeless guy 20 pounds and a big mac to watch a store for 3 days and nights.

The great down under, they give us Kangaroo’s, Jack Dundee, Lucy Lawless (Xena) and now you can add BRNDNU, an online sneaker store bringing you into the little circle world of Australia, New Zealand and Scandinavia. The online store sells three shoe brands from those surrounding areas Gram, Gram SE, and Sneaky Steve my favotire of the three. The BRNDNU store is great for three reasons, first and most obvious it allows you to get a hold of shoes you wouldn’t normally be able to, reason two is the site is super easy to navigate and go from searching to buying. The third and final reason is that the site has all the shoe conversion sizes for you, it has the equivalents of the EU, Japan, UK, and USA, and a size chart to let you know what your size shoe is in each. And ladies the online store isn’t just for men, they have some shoes for you as well.

BRNDNU store

Sneakart is a simple new idea for customizing your shoes, you use the custom stickers to put onto your shoes. Putting the stickers on is an easy process and taking them off is just as easy as well. Sneakart also allows you to upload your own designs that you can print out and use yourself. The whole DIY mentality and movement ig branching out into every area imaginable, just waiting to customize my socks next.

MSTRPLN in collaboration with Ubiq created a wearable sneaker with wi-fi detecting technology built in. I heard about this shoe a while back, and thought it was a pretty good idea, but haven’t much heard of anything else since. So in the spirit of not letting things die, I’m talking about it again, and maybe some other cool tech inspired shoes will hit the market more. The ASRD (A Step In the Right Direction), as they are called can detect wi-fi frequencies the closer you get to them, and the stronger the signal the more the lights light up on the sneakers. So if you want to be fully tech-ed out, just rock your ASRD’s, have your blackberry in one hand, your iPhone in the other, while wearing your jaw bone earpiece, carrying your mac book in your raf simmons eastpack.

Born in 1982, in Sweden, Julia Hederus debuted her first collection in 2007 after graduting with a masters degree in menswear from London’s Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design. Her first collection was inspired by lego’s, making the pieces retangular and box shaped. Since then she’s set up her own studio and is currently working with K-Swiss on a line of shoes. Her shoes for K-Swiss are based around the sqaure and block shape pattern adding layers to the shoe, even being able to take a layer off. You can view some of her clothing pieces after the jump.

 Hederus For K-Swiss

Kawasaki Footwear is a true eco line of shoes, its process includes melting all natural materials together such as cotton, suede and rubber. There is a history behind this shoe brand it’s just making a comeback after a 20 year hiatus do to the Iron Curtain, but now that that issue has fallen a new factory in the Czech Republic has been hard at work bringing new life back into this old brand. The history is so deep a simple sum up would be like this, a communist shoe with a Japanese name manufactured/prodcued in the Czech Republic, so if you want to read more about the history of  Kawasaki and all it’s been through just click here.

Gotta give it to those italians they know how to make a heel; nice and high. Giuseppe Zanotti makes those sex and the city type of heels (ladies, I know all about Jimmy Choo’s) that’ll have you prancing down the street and skipping over puddles doing your best Carey Bradshaw impression. And don’t worry ladies he has handbags to match with your high steppers, but I’m warning you now ladies you will spend way too much time on his website looking at heels. You might catch heelxiety if you’re not careful.