crooked tongues magazine News Features

There’s not too many skaters who can create the same level of speculation as Eric Koston when it comes to sneakers. Not only has Eric pushed skateboarding forward since the dawn of the 1990s, but those lazy “Jordan of skateboarding” comparisons make a certain sense on the footwear side too. We’ve loved his line of signature models since the K1 in 1997 (bear in mind that we were once part of a project that was wrongly attributed to Koston’s line when images debuted) and his involvement goes far beyond just nodding at a sample. Koston is a sneaker fanboy. Not in that corny seeded-retro-basketball-shoes-and-tight-designer-denim way, but in a way that resonates with us. He really is fucking obsessed.

If you saw the shots of Eric’s closet in a ‘Sole Collector’ photoshoot a few years back, you’ll testify that he’s a like mind, and when he signed to Nike SB in 2009 we anticipated great things — if the resulting fruits of the signing had been a canvas and vulc affair, we would’ve been crushed. Even the ‘ERIC, WELCOME TO SB’ official announcement was steeped in classic Nike iconography and from that point, our anticipation went sky high. Koston doesn’t just bring the vast following of ageing skaters, X Games audiences and the new wave of kids dreaming of a Berrics visit to the brand — he also knows a lot about what makes a great skate shoe.

His work with the Dunk set it off and the FP design from late last year was wrongly believed to be the Koston pro-model on first glance. That silhouette is underrated, but it ended up informing the Koston One in a major way. The Koston One is a major shift from Eric’s iconic, wider shoes of years gone by — it puts everything beneath the bonnet rather than tricking out the exterior. That includes a drop-in Lunar midsole, which harnesses the potential of our favourite contemporary Nike innovation. Now everyone’s into something simple, but hunting for a break from copies of the usual vulc-standards, a new design challenge and a fresh gap in the market has opened and it’s one that paved the way for the Koston One’s genesis.

Commencing with a Kobe hookup meant the Nike SB Koston One’s LA launch offered some scope to talk about the parallels between basketball, skating and the sneakers and styles that link them with Eric and the shoe’s designer, Mr. Shawn Carboy.


Eric, Do you feel any pressure with this shoe? Your shoes tend to be something of an event, from the K1 onwards — you and Muska seem to be the ones people watch when it comes to sneaker development.

ERIC KOSTON Yeah. It does happen. It’s not something that Nike put on me — it’s something that I put on myself, but I’m probably transferring it onto Shawn Carboy! Me and him went back and forth a lot, grinding it down, to even the littlest detail.

The speculation was ridiculous. I recall a Photoshop of the original Koston with a Tre midsole.

E (Laughter)I saw that and thought, “If that’s what I came up with, shit — I’m in trouble.”

Everything’s internalized — you always had the shoes with the Humara or ACG look — the K3 and 4 has some Jordan — but the original chapters were so wide and big, yet this is streamlined.

E That was just what was around at the time — part of the era. And I remember the K1 seeming pretty streamlined back in the day, but I looked at it the other day, like, “gosh!”

Width seemed to represent safety back then.

E Yeah, padding sacrificed flexibility and feel and all that stuff.

Now you can put that inside the shoe.

E Yeah, I used to want to show off all the bells and whistles, but this time I’m hiding it all.

SHAWN CARBOY We can address things. With the FP, the toe piece was pressed to the outside. With this one we did everything from the inside. It’s all about zero distractions.

E The lining inside is seamless so it fits. Your toes can jam to the front of your feet with normal skate shoes, but a thin lining here makes a big difference. It’s one-piece beyond the heel.

S It’s to alleviate pressure — especially around the big toe.

It feels similar to the FP in design — did you treat it like a dry run in tech?

S For sure, when I got the FP brief it was like a test. They were like, “Right, you’ve gotta design the new Tre — what are you gonna do?”

It’s a sick shoe, but the Tre never really performed commercially.

S One thing with the Tre shoes is that we never tiered the technology down into other product. This time we wondered if we could take it down into signature shoes. Then you can see the story — it can work as a two-year cycle. In holiday ’10, the FP gets launched, then in summer ’11, the Koston gets launched. In fall ‘11, the P-Rod drops.

Who decided on the Lunar footbed concept?

E I wanted to put it in somehow, but I asked, “How are we going to put it in?” With Nike it’s the iconic product they built — Lunar has the ridges, but it has to be identifiable, but I wanted to hide it inside.

There was never any plans to put it on the outside?

E No. Never any plans for that — I wanted a cup sole. We worked it out. It’s funny how minimal it is.

S It made perfect sense with Eric’s idea that less is more. We structured it. When we went to work on Eric’s shoe, cushioning was important. With Lunar, Eric Avar and Kevin Hoffer went back to the archives to reinvent running. When Eric and I were talking, he had a pair of LunarRacers on.

E When I’m around to visit on campus I got to the employee store for a shopping spree and the first thing I want is a shoe that’s comfortable. I want something to relax in and I got two pairs — the LunarRacer and the LunarGlide, because I wanted comfort shoes. I wore those things and if I wasn’t skating that’s all I wore. That’s when we started talking like, “How come this hasn’t been introduced into skating? We’ve got to make this work!”

S It’s light, it’s responsive and it’s comfortable. It distributes weight so there’s no hot spots too — it supports the whole foot. Having it exposed would just shred against griptape. We went back and forth — Eric had a couple of ideas there with modifying a cup sole.

E Fit has always been a struggle. One of the best fitting shoes I ever put my feet into was a Nike Presto. Y’know, I had many, many pairs of those. It’s not the most stable shoe, but it was about figuring out the construction of a Presto in a skate shoe so it would fit glove-like.

S Skate shoes have evolved over the years so the idea of simplifying how many parts you have on a shoe has evolved — when we talk board feel we’re not just talking about the bottom of it.

E There’s been so many different eras of skate shoes and it got really panel heavy. All that creates is reasons for shoes to fall apart. We wanted less seams.

It’s trad-tech. There’s a bit of Bruin on that upper…

E The Bruin definitely did get referenced as far as silhouette. It’s in the last. But it’s also minimal because I didn’t want any panels — I didn’t want to see them all. I wanted one-piece.

Could you see this shoe influencing other Nike departments? You’ve always been keen to reassert the position of skaters as athletes — that would prove that SB’s gone to the next level.

E Well, it’s funny, because this is the first time that it’s been used as a midsole drop-in and you normally see it. Who knows where it could go down the road? It could be in basketball — it could influence that.

S I’m not going to say that other departments aren’t going to hit us up! When I started thinking about how we could use technology, it actually started with the snowboard product. The Kaiju in particular technology from those was put into other boots. It made sense — it was economical and cost efficient and that makes sense as far as a story. It’s all about the athlete — the booty on the FP makes it iconic.



The Kobe hookup is pretty crazy —you wore the Kobe Jersey in the old Transworld ‘Chomp on This’ video and the old Lakers K3 was great. Does this feel like the logical conclusion to that?

E Probably! Yeah, being such a psychotic fan seems to have paid off. I’ve made Laker colourways of all my shoes in the past and it’s just part of my life.

HUNTER MURAIRA (Nike SB Global Brand Manager) I want to expose Eric completely as a jock. He really changed his sport, but he is completely a jock and he’s a humungous Lakers fan. He’s also a fanatical golfer. He takes nothing lightly. He goes hard in the paint. This collaboration isn’t an arranged marriage.

E For Paul’s third shoe, there’s a Kobe cameo and that was the second time I met him. I never knew that he understood and appreciated skateboarding so much. He likes the lifestyle.

H It was the first time people saw Koston associated with the brand. When Eric first came out to campus, we went downstairs to the Kitchen. That was the first thing Eric wanted to do — he was like a kid in a candy store getting his hands dirty looking at different designs. He spoke to guys like Eric Avar and Tinker. We sat down and saw some different shoes — we saw the Kobe IV. That hi-top to mid-top and low-top departure interested us. It had us talking about cup sole versus vulc too. These two guys are the only guys who could really take chances — with the Koston One it shows kids that they don’t have to follow the vulc trend that’s out there — as Kobe did with height for the Kobe IV and now the Kobe VI.

That’s how the relationship started. When we were starting with this project and talking about the energy, Eric asked, “Um, what’s up with Kobe? Does he want to do something?” We thought it was the right thing to do. Skateboarders adopted a lot of things from basketball, like footwear. There’s the Dunk — made for basketball worn for skating. Then there’s the Blazer and mine and Eric’s favourite — the Jordan I. Then there’s style. There’s a lot of kids playing basketball and there’s a lot of kids skateboarding — style’s what separates the have and have-nots.

Eric, there’s not too many athletes as involved as you in sneaker design — if you hadn’t made it in that department, would you have tried as a footwear designer?

E Yeah, probably. Down the road I still want to be a part of it. I have a real affinity towards it. If I could continue with it, with a line or as part of SB, it’s something I want to be into.

What about the material choice?

S Eric called me up and said that with synthetic materials, his board had made a “zing” when he did tricks.

E Skating uses all your instincts, and any distraction matters. I wanted to go back to what always worked — suede.

S As we were working on the FP, retailers asked when the suede version was coming out. With Eric’s shoe we could launch something in that material. He likes a shoe when it wears in.

E With wear and tear it becomes more customizable to your feet rather than becoming flat and falling apart. I emailed Shawn a picture of a pair I’d been skating in for two weeks — I never wear anything for longer than 4-5 days — and it was a shoe with an a ollie hole. I haven’t had that since I was 14 or 15 years old! Normally a shoe would just fall apart, but it wore through. That was kind of cool.

We wanted to keep it simple. When it comes to skate videos, you know what the shoe is. We wanted to colour up the sole just like that — like shoes I like. I wanted my shoe to be identifiable. I wanted it to tell from a distance that it is my shoe. There’s a lot of little tributes in the outsole to Nike’s heritage because I am a fan. There’s some Jordan XI — one of my favourite Jordans — and the Jordan I too, there’s some Air Force 1 and Dunk there too. The way it’s sliced and diced up is NIKE FREE inspired too, but made for skate. It functions. You can constantly turn with as much contact with the skateboard as possible.

S Last summer we had some amazing colour ups of Nike football pieces like the Mercurial Vapor — we had a concept of visual acuity there and we used it here to line up parts of the skateboard.

On the upper on the shoe, are there any other specific references sneaker-wise? Neoprene evokes the Presto and Huarache…

E Yeah, Presto and Huarache are some of my favourite shoes that Nike’s made. The Presto is present in the Zoom FPs and yeah, the Bruin is in there too.

I like because it feels like a skate Huarache. The skate industry seems to be about really giving a shit without looking like you give a shit when it comes to signature shoes — does that make a brief like this difficult?

S For sure. If you focus on making it better and building on existing principles, it’ll happen. Making it look good is pretty easy. Sometimes form follows function. Everything on the Koston is function. Even the stitches.

It’s interesting how the Bruin toe design is in there as part of the visual acuity angle.

E We wanted a stitch line, which is actually an alignment aid and people need that.

Nike’s always taken a risk — we see old Alpha Project pieces and how it trickles down into later, more commercial models. Eric seems broadminded —
he even cites an Alpha shoe as a direct influence. How is he as a collaborator?

S He’s awesome. When we first started it, we kind of both had the same idea. I knew we needed to do something new and different but we didn’t know what we needed to do. I was thinking of this drop-in sockliner idea then, and Eric was like, “I want a Janoski, but I don’t want a Janoski!”

It doesn’t weigh anything.

S If you want to watch a new technology, it’s easier to validate new technologies than old ones. With the FP it was about how far you can actually take it. You can make it look like a dress shoe and form around our foot, like a Jordan. Then even the gnarly fashion kids are like, “Well, I’m not mad at it!”

E To stay safe and healthy, you need to be able to withstand impact. I don’t make everything first try — there’s a lot of trial and error.

S With the FP we got it lower to the ground.

Has the feedback been good from riders so far?

E Yeah it has — in Portland there’s plenty of kids who test them because they’re sample size 9s, they live up there and they were really positive about it. I remember putting this shoe on for the first time and feeling the comfort.

S We knew we needed to use a cup sole, but he suggested the material and I thought I’d give it try. We knew we needed a certain allowance in Lunar material for it to work and we built the sockliner around that allowance, we knew the heel would be fine — but the forefoot is another one. The whole idea was to make it diverse. You wouldn’t have to worry about traction, stability and resilience — a jack of all trades and a master of everything!

Eric, you’re big on the social media side, plus you’ve got the Berrics side of things too — have you been keeping an eye on that breed of skate kid who wants the new shit, but they want a mix of simple stuff and something tech or totally different?

E They’re a little more finicky, but it’s just about what’s available to them. I pay attention. People reply to me on Twitter and I also have a public email address at the Berrics, that’s like over 12,000 or 13,000 emails that are unread right now, but I skim through them and it’s kind of cool. I have my own database — my own little focus group, and kids like to be honest and you take it, but it’s good to hear. Some opinions suck, but we’ve all got one.

The Nike SB Koston One drops on June 4th at Slam City and other SB spots. They went on our feet a week ago and we've been wearing them solidly since.