Firstname: Matthew (aka twizm)

Age: 20

Children: No

Job: International Business Student (ACU) / Sales Assistant @ Laced sneakers / Co-founder of Project 4000

Location: Brisbane, Australia

 

 

1/ What was you first pair of sneakers? Any nice story to tell about them?

 

The first pair of sneakers I bought being fully aware of “designer sneakers” would be a pair of Run DMC 35th Anniversary adidas Superstars from Ebay. Of course they turned out to be fake, but I could only prove this thanks to a certain website called Crooked Tongues. From that point my reading of CT and subsequent discovery of the Australian based Sneaker Freaker, it all snowballed into something that now is ingrained into my life.

 

 

2/ How would you generally describe your relation with sneakers? Would you consider yourself as “addicted”?

 

I’m going to be honest and say that I never grew up wearing Air Max, Torsion, Jordans or anything cool. For me it was growing up as a kid in a family where we bought shoes that lasted the whole year and weren’t over $50. I suppose you could say my fascination could have come from all those suppressed years of boring white leather Lynx joggers. For me growing up (in the 90s) only the rich kids owned any Nike or adidas. I hear all these stories of kids having these ZX or Air Max shoes at school and think “how loaded were their parents?” But I digress. To better answer the question; I don’t consider myself “addicted” because I wont buy a shoe for the sake of buying it, an addiction transcends judgment, and I am sure as hell one judgmental person. I’d more consider myself a “sneaker head” (for lack of a better term), for me sneakers are just one of my interests.

 

 

3/ According to you, what are the ingredients for a good shoe?

 

4 things: Shape, Materials, Cohesion, Knowledge. Shape because you can’t make a round shoe look decent on foot, it’s simply something that doesn’t appeal to me. For my taste, a nice sleek wedge shape is king (which will show through in later questions). Materials make a shoe, both from a quality and application sense. Shitty pleather is never a pleasant feeling compared to a nice leather, but there’s no point having a heavy leather on a performance runner. Materials also make the textures of a shoe, which in my view is what separates a good shoe from a great shoe. Anyone can sit down with a box of crayons and fluke a decent colourway, but nailing the materials to give it the right look when you have them in hand is the real trick. Cohesion is always a big part of what I look for in a shoe. It doesn’t mean the shoe has to be all one colour, but it needs to look “right”. The whole shoe has to be balanced, and most of the time the best colourways will accentuate the features of a good shoe. Finally I put down knowledge. To put it simply, you can tell when for example, a collaborator loves the shoe they’re working on, they know how to get the best from it. In those instances you can see their own passion come through the shoe, and it’s something that makes me smile even if I don’t personally like what they have done.

 

 

4/ How do you feel towards the so-called “sneaker-scene”? How did your feeling evolve over the years?

 

I wont lie, I’ve only been in this scene for some 4 years, but in that time I’ve seen a move from a love of straight retro looks (be they reproductions or contemporary adaptations) to a more insane period preluded by adidas’ oddity range and now after that shock to the system a move to (being blunt) utter dullness. I don’t think there has been a shoe that has made me say “damn that’s impressive” in 18 months, and that’s quite disappointing. That may also have something to do with the fact that the sneaker scene itself has been watered down as the mainstream circles begin to take a bigger part of the pie, and this has almost forced alot of sneaker heads to mature their taste and move more into what I would class as faux-high fashion, which seems to revolve alot around Japanese brands. I’m not knocking what they do, more questioning the legitimacy of their customers, who seem to have brought the same buyer characteristics from sneakers to a completely new market, which has altered how that is now perceived.

 

 

5/ What is the sneaker brand you’re giving most interest in at the moment & why?

 

Adidas, because they’re doing what New Balance are supposed to be doing. Simple good looking shoes, adidas Skate has been a brilliant surprise in 2009 colourway wise even if some of their shoes aren’t up my alley. Biggest disappointment is New Balance, they have well and truly dropped the ball on their UK operations and they have lost a customer in me because of it. There was a point in time when I wouldn’t consider anything except a UK made NB, that time has passed. Biggest surprise shoe is adidas Busentiz, worst is the new shape of the UK made New Balance 1500 and the build quality.

 

 

6/ Which shoe that you’ve bought was the hardest to get & how did it occur?

 

New Balance 1500GGB (solebox 1 of 150). Got them from some twat in the UK who will remain nameless (teehee) after he had them for sale but decided to reconsider it. Bought them with the most I’ve spent on a pair of shoes (although the prices these fetch nowadays is stupid) and never regretted it once.

 

 

7/ What is your current sneakers top 5 (shoes you either already have or would wish to)?

 

Solebox New Balance 1500GGB (would buy 3 pairs if I could find them), Crooked Tongues adidas ZX9000 (the 9000 fits my foot perfectly and CT’s adaptation cuts the schoolboy candy shop colours and makes it a grown-up’s shoe, and used black/yellow BEFORE Lance Armstrong painted Nike Livestrong yellow), Crooked Tongues New Balance 1500 (ultra wearable, more infrared than an Infrared AM90, and rain approved), New Balance 576 20th Anniversary – Navy (Better than just about any 576 ever), Hanon x Schoeller New Balance 990 (indestructible, waterproof, super comfy, nuff said), Microzine New Balance 576STI aka Stingray #1 (the only shoe on this list I don’t own, and one of the only shoes I still really want to have in my posession badly, to me they embody the ultimate in what a New Balance collaboration can equate to).

 

 

8/ Putting sneakers aside, what are your main interests/passions? How do you spend your time? Anything you’d like to make us discover?

 

Cars (both modern and classic, as long as it has character also motorsports of all kinds), good food (none of this poncy crap, I’m talking good homely fresh food, food that soothes the soul), a good TV show/movie, knowledge. To elaborate from the last point, I just like learning new things whether it’s about the complex financial derivatives that caused the GFC, new technological advances, Einstein’s theory of relativity, or black holes and nebulas (I have a bit of a thing for space as well). I just enjoy learning about the world around me and being able to broaden my horizons. I’m sure I bore people with my constant drivel but I don’t care, I enjoy being able to say “yeah I understand that” and love nothing more than learning something new. On the entertainment front I’d like to suggest watching the US version of the TV series The Office or Parks and Recreation (which features writers from The Office) both are comedies and remain the pinnacle in my view of comedy writing currently on prime time TV. Movie wise I’d suggest watching Stranger than Fiction, a delightful watch that never gets boring even for me.

 

 

Thanks Matt!