These Skaters Turned a 1995 Honda Van Into a Wild Salomon (EXCLUSIVE)
A moment of serendipity brought Ayman and Osama Abdeldayem, the two brothers behind Baltimore skate brand Carpet Company, together with the Salomon XT-Whisper Void: The shoes fell out of the sky and into their lap! Or, well, they fell from a box being carried by Salomon’s North America director of lifestyle, the Abdeldayem brothers’ close friend Chris Ritchie, and the director of merchandising, George Egan, as the four walked through Paris. The box fell apart, and the shoes spilled out onto the sidewalk, where the Abdeldayem brothers immediately clocked the sneakers' wild iridescent lime color.
Months went by, and when Ritchie reached out to Carpet Company to work on a shoe together, the brothers remembered that unofficial “drop.” “I'm like, ‘Hey, there was this one shoe that fell out of the box in Paris that was insane — that's the shoe that we want to work on,’” Osama says. “And Ritchie is like, ‘Oh yeah, you weren't supposed to see that.’ If we weren't there and the box didn't explode, we'd be working on a different shoe with a totally different story.” But as fate would have it, the box did break, and now Carpet Company is releasing its first non-skate shoe.
When I jump on a video call with the Abdelayems, the brothers are standing inside their freshly opened Baltimore flagship. And the color inspiration for the new Carpet Company Salomon XT-Whisper — their first sneaker collaboration to be released in the store when it drops May 16 — sure seems obvious. I see red pipes, an all-red ceiling, red speakers perched above the red-walled changing room, a big red clock above the red-carpeted jewelry counter. However, the iridescent red upper of the shoe is actually inspired by Ayman and Osama’s 1995 Honda Acty street van, a fire-red vehicle with small devil horns on the top and reflective windows which they call the “habibi express.” Although more broadly, Osama says, “this shoe captures the madness of our brain.”
Tell me about this red Honda van.
Osama: It’s a showstopper. It breaks necks. Every single neck that is walking on the street is broken.
Ayman: So many people take pictures of it because it looks fake on the road. It does not look real.
Osama: We like cars, but not typical cars. That car is cheaper than most cars on the street, but it's a car that just feels awesome; it speaks to us, and its personality is through the roof. And the shoe connects to the car. The underglow of the car when you're driving at night is the yellow underglow that's on the outside of the shoe. We’re capturing the essence of the car. It's not easy to make that car into a shoe, but we were able to do it.
That level of storytelling is something that’s stood out about your previous collaborations. How do you approach working with other brands?
Ayman: We say no to a lot of things. We're not in the market of needing to collaborate every quarter, and if anything feels forced, we leave it.
Osama: Salomon felt natural. This is our first non-skateboard shoe. People could be like “Oh, you're a skateboard company,” but we're not only into skateboarding. We do everything.
Ayman: Everything's rooted in skateboarding for sure. That's where our brains come from, but since we've been into clothes and shoes for so long, it goes beyond that.
Is there anything about you guys that might surprise people?
Osama: There's a skateboarding side [to us] and then there's the really high-level engineer, science, and math side. We're pretty nerdy. I don't know if it's just by default of being Egyptian, our parents were always like, ‘school, school, school.’
We approach everything in a troubleshooting way. Every thought is not only [focused on] fashion or skateboarding, it's thought out in an engineering sense. We approach everything almost like a homework assignment. That’s a very permanent part of our brains. I mean, we both worked engineering jobs for almost a decade.
Ayman: This started as a side passion project, we had to be nerds first.
And of course, it all started in Baltimore. Tell me a little more about the city and the scene there.
Ayman: There’s so much potential here and there are so many cool people who are doing things. It’s just not a major city. When we wanted to plant our seed, we had to do it here in Baltimore instead of going to New York or LA because those places already get so much shine. We wanted to do it at home first and make people proud that we’re here. And then if we grow, we put Baltimore on the map first.
Osama: When you come to Baltimore, it's chaos, which we thrive off of. If you're in New York, you see people move in a certain way, when you're in California, your brain gets triggered in its own way. But when you're in Baltimore, you have a different approach. Seeing the lawlessness and the chaos of Baltimore, you incorporate that into your thoughts. I think that mentality and that environment really create something very unique. It's hard to explain without experiencing it.
Is it hard working together as brothers?
Osama: I think it's really good that there are two brains involved because we filter each other, and if we're both really hyped on something, it's a good sign. There are a lot of things I want to make and he's like, “absolutely not.” And there are a lot of things he wants to make. I'm like, “Bro, are you crazy?”
Every single item in this store is an idea that one of us had, and then we just keep building it until it feels like a full item. And it takes time.
Ayman: Everything goes through our two-person authentication, and we still do mostly everything, which is crazy. But I think that's how you make cool products or make a cool experience, so we're okay with it.
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