THE MAKING OF AIR YEEZYS

Kanye West: MC, Producer, Hypebeast: I’ve always stressed my passion for design—and not just, “Oh, let me throw my name on this,” but to use my celebrity as an opportunity to jump into the design world—and in this case, to design my own shoe.

Mark Smith: Creative Dir. of Special Projects, Nike: I don’t really put my life in dates in a normal way. [Laughs.] So I couldn’t even say when everything went down, but one day I got a call asking me if I would work with Kanye on the project.

Kanye West: It was after the Air Force 1 “1 Night Only” event [in December 2006]. I sat there and drew countless forms of shoes, and a lot of them were inspired by Back to the Future, by the McFlys or whatever people call them—I just call them the Mags. All kinds of different ideas that stemmed from that and Robotech and all my other anime influences.

Mark Smith: What we wanted to do was really create something that was specific and unique to the two of us working together, so it wasn’t an entourage full of people on either side.

Kanye West: Nike is the No. 1 sneaker lifestyle brand, right? And I’m the No. 1 most influential cutural pop art brand: scarves, beards, plastic glasses, whatever. So you take those two things and you mesh that—it’s very exciting. I’m the Nike of culture.

Mark Smith: He showed me what he was into. I asked him about sneakers that he liked, what he was wearing and why he was wearing them; he’s very up to the minute on what he likes.


Kanye West: I grabbed all these Jordans from their archives, and I’m sitting in the office next to Tinker [Hatfield, Jordan designer] and Mark, just pulling out shit and putting it in front of him like, “I like this element.” We just vibed it out.

To read the rest of the interview, go to Complex