Eric Koston Told Us Why He Made Such a Controversial Nike Sneaker

The skate legend has really, really paid attention to the creative process.

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Since signing with Nike, Eric Koston’s shoe releases come loaded with extra expectations. The unveiling of the Nike SB Eric Koston 3 Hyperfeel has been messageboard and comments section gold, with the polarizing design proving to be a deliberately divisive statement — particularly in an era where vulcanized rubber, suede and canvas is still shifting units.

Some love the elevated Flyknit collar and others are baffled by it. Koston’s not too phased by the criticism. It certainly looks better on the foot, and being a shoe, that’s kind of the point. Feedback by everyone who skated it seems positive. Again, that was the intention. Like its predecessors, it’s another experiment in amplifying feel with the tools that Nike offers.

Lest we forget, even in the éS era of Koston classics, Nike was a significant reference point. The Visible Air nods (from a time when, legend has it, Nike’s ten-year exclusivity on the window in the sole had come to a close), plus the Jordan homaging on the flowing lines of the K4 were executed with a real affection. That’s because Koston is really into shoes.

At odds with an era when every Premiership player with expendable income and zero taste can amass a load of lurid studded and zippered hi-tops plus a stack of queue fodder and be labeled a “sneakerhead," Koston is a longtime connoisseur. Check the Berrics Footnotes video series to see a garage of glorious disarray, or his Epicly Later’d for a great anecdote about Mike York breaking his heart by drunkenly pissing in his Air Max 95s back in the day.

You can see that obsession in the way he talks about his own models. He admits that he’d might have been a shoe designer if the skate thing hadn’t worked out and describes the process of creating a shoe with the detail and lingo of someone who has really, really paid attention to the creative process.

Why was there such a gap between installments? I’m so used to the annual LeBron shoe or other signature releases, but there was three years between this Koston shoe and the last one.

Yeah, it’s been three years. Y’know, I think I make the kind of shoes that aren’t going to be churned out every year, so I’ve tried to make them for longer lifespans. I wanted to make something kind of classic that would stick around. I mean, I just redid the Koston 1 with siping like Nike Free and Zoom Air — we’re going to redo the fit of it as well. We’re still trying to perfect that thing because there’s a few things that didn’t totally hit with it when it first came out.

Back in 2010, the drop-in Lunarlon was a totally new thing in your shoe, but it’s pretty commonplace beyond skate now.

Yeah, even Kobe had the drop-in and they had interchangeable drop-ins for different cushioning systems.

It got a little wild for me with that installment.

I thought they were cool. I mean skating could do the same thing…you could have one for the champion gap jumper…we did actually want to do that, but the message can confuse people. Then you’d have to tell the story. No everyone knows the story and why.

Sometimes people just want to see the shoe — they don’t want to have an instruction manual.

Yeah, we don’t always need all that technical jargon.

The skate scene is kind of conservative — did you deliberately go out to provoke a response with this one? It’s a polarizing silhouette, so did you know that you’d ruffle some feathers?

Oh yeah, from the start I knew that it was. It was different but it’s also good. It was interesting to me. It serves a purpose. It’s not nuts for the sake of being nuts like, “I’m gonna do something crazy to be crazy!

That would be the worst.

It would! If that’s what I did, it would turn out that way. Skaters get conservative. They’re meant to be progressive, forward-thinking guys and then a shoe might make them go, “Ewwww! Gross!” They lose it. Then they want a black Janoski! [Laughs].

That’s a safe bet. Was this the shoe you always wanted to create with Nike? before, all the innovations were, for necessary reasons, on the inside of the shoe. This is way out with the collar — when did you first see Flyknit?

I saw it for the first time in 2011. I’ve been lucky to see that stuff well before release when I was going to the Innovation Kitchen. They’d bring all this stuff out and be like, “Can you use this?” It’s pretty amazing. It was like a buffet of technology. I‘d be like, “Okay, what looks cool? And what seriously functions?” This shoe is more of it, but it’s not all of it — I can’t shove everything into one shoe.

Is it a challenge to get everything you want into a skate shoe with what’s on offer, but not make it like the car Homer Simpson designs in The Simpsons?

You can’t have everything! This is it for now, but the thing about me is that once it’s done, I don’t sit back, kick it and shut my mind off. I can’t do that. I’m constantly thinking about new stuff because I want to see something different.

When did you sign-off on the Koston 3?

The last sample we did was around early December. It was sketchy! Very close and down to the wire. That last sample was a close call. It should have been like, nine months or so from release. There’s a lot of things you have to do internally — a lot. We took the thing apart a few times…blew it apart.

Is that other makeup a Lakers tribute colorway?

Actually, that colorway isn’t a Laker colorway. It’s blue…a reference to the first Nike shoe I ever had — it’s the LD-1000.

Oh, like the Internationalist colorway?

Yeah. That LD stuck around, unless they renamed it.

It’s a very Nike palette. Did you design the shoe based on the current skate look that’s all higher cut Dickies and exposed socks? We’re not doing the vast denim any more…

Yes. Socks also became an important accessory. It’s for that dude, but it’s also for the guy who doesn’t want that and wants it to look like a shoe with just a normal or baggier fitting pant. It’s more about how it works — if you like it for the aesthetics, great, but if you want it to just look like a skate shoe, great. I like to see it. Even when I wear a baggier pant it always flies up and exposes that collar.

You’ve always been heavily involved in the making of your shoes and unashamedly geeky when you were discussing them. Some guys are quite blasé about their signature model.

Some guys don’t obsess over things like that and that’s their personality. Or they trust a designer over their own judgement.

It’s like a Charles Barkley approach versus a Kobe approach to their Nike shoes.

Yeah, I care about it. Also, it’s my name. It’s my body — I have to prove that it performs well otherwise bullshit will be called on me. They’re not going to be ripping into Carboy (Shawn Carboy — lead designer on the Koston series). I’m going to take the fall! I’m the guy they’re gonna nail up so it’s my responsibility to micro manage every millimeter of the shoe.

Going back to Kobe, we’ve seen his own changing needs in the last few chapters of his shoes. You mentioned in an earlier conversation, that these shoes don’t necessarily tell the story of you, but we’ve got this emphasis on ankle support — is that something you need more of at this point or is it just to ensure the longevity of your career?

Yes. It’s about contributing to my longevity. It’s about the advantage gained, but I also want to be able to skate longer. It’s about how much stamina I’ve got at my young age! [Laughs] With a lighter shoe, that’s less energy exerted, so we went lightweight. It’s form fitting and it’s confidence boosting, because this is mental, too. I’m in these shoes and I’m locked in and I feel like I can do a tre flip while I’m just sitting here, you know? It’s totally mental. And I want any advantage gained, whether it’s physical or mental.

Would the H-Street or 101 version of you have been focused on career preservation if they created a shoe?

No way. Not back then.

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