Patta x Converse is Made For (Aimlessly) Walking
Brand: Patta x Experimental Jetset x Converse
Model: Chuck 70
Release Date: November 11
Buy: Online at the Highsnobiety Shop
Editor’s Notes: You know that feeling when you're walking around a city without any real destination, just taking a look around and seeing what you might find? Well if you do, then you have practiced psychogeography.
It's a mash-up of the words psychology and geography and it's the act of aimlessly walking through an urban environment, drifting around and following your instinct to discover places. And for the Amsterdam-based design collective Experimental Jetset, it was the inspiration when creating a sneaker with Patta and Converse.
Part of a larger collection between the dutch streetwear label and Experimental Jetset, which sees them launch the "Patta Psychogeographic Practice" with a range of collaborative apparel, the latest release from the pair is arguably the most important product needed for walking around the city: sneakers.
Using Converse's signature Chuck 70, the two have covered the shoe with messages advocating for psychogeography.
Most noticeable when first looking at the shoes are blue and red arrows that cross over each other. These are, according to Experimental Jetset, a reference to the artwork for This is the Modern World (1977) by The Jam and to The Naked City (1957), a psychogeographic map of Paris created by Guy Debord — a Marxist theorist who coined the term.
These arrows are pointing either left and right or south and north depending on which shoe you look at, something that Patta alludes to in a statement about the collaboration where it says: "reject the autopilot routes you typically travel and explore based on impulse. This collaboration is about the apparel and where you take these styles. Right is left. Left is right. South is north. North is south."
Regardless of where you take these shoes, all that matters, in the words of Patta and Experimental Jetset, is that you "keep on driftin'."
