Gourmet

HS: It’s also been interesting to see Nike now putting vulcanized soles on some of their classics now.

Greg: We feel, no matter what happens, behind the scenes that we were able to react quick to something we felt was a void in the market versus a big, forecasted company. A classic mom and pop versus corporation story. We had our ear to the street and were able to react a lot more quickly. Now, they are playing catch up. That’s how we interpret that situation.

HS: It’s fun to see how you interpret some really East Coast types of footwear, not to say Jordan’s aren’t huge all over, but certainly the duck boot is more East Coast than West. How does your shift in coast play into your design process? Do you view things differently now?

Greg: Yeah, I think its almost a gift and a curse. We’re almost ambidextrous as a crew now. We’re ingrained in a thinking based on some of the classic shoes we grew up with, and now that we live day to day out here on the West Coast, we’re starting to get in tune with the styles here. Having the weather be nonstop the way it is here, less seasonal. Little things, but enough for the West Coast frame of mind, skate shoes and things, start to filter into what we thought were the holy grail of footwear growing up. Now we’re able to see both coasts. We had the East Coast frame of mind on lock to the point that being as we’ve been here as long as we have, the West Coast begins to invade. It makes it easier for us to do a hybrid mash-up kind of shoe more gracefully. We don’t have focus groups. It just is happening normally.

HS: It seems also with holiday, and then going into spring, you are pushing a little further with materials. Clearly you started with canvas, and now there is a lot more texture and even rubber. Thinking about the initial impulse of doing a luxury clothing line, can you pull some of those ideas now back into making footwear?

Greg: Yes and no. It’s almost like church and state when it comes to the shoes vs. clothing. Because, we’ve not abandoned the clothing, but from a designers frame of mind your always pulling from everywhere. When it came to the decision to focus on the shoes it was almost like a clean slate from there. When we introduce new models, it doesn’t take much to think we did these in canvas, which represents the base, and then from that point you can only add more depth and evolve. As these shoes stick around, of course we’re going to incorporate new things. We tried to reset from the ground up, offering shows with the bare minimum knowing we can only add stuff from as we go along. There’s a couple of new fabrics, but we still haven’t even done color blocking. We are just trying to evolve it in a baby step kind of way.