 | Chako
Street/Urban Wear Expert
The word on the street is... fashion! Our sassy Street Wear Expert Chako is the urban outfitter you need to sport serious threads, G. |
Pop Culture Extremes?
5/18/01
"In the past, there always seemed to be enough time and people," proclaims a man from an old IBM
commercial. What of today? It seems like there's not enough time, so we have learned to do as
much as we can in the time frame that we are given. We've learned to multi-task and we have
created all types of machines that can do more than one thing: cell phones that can also be
also used as alarm clocks, address books, recorders and web carolers, game systems that can
double as cd and DVD players and shoes that can multitask in performance AND style.
Let's imagine a hybrid of the last two items on my list: the game system and the shoe.
What could possibly be birthed of the two? It seems that Nintendo's 2001 Style campaign
has launched a shoe 'for club kids with attention deficit disorder' (F.A., "In Style", May
2001, pg. 240). If you can imagine this, the shoes are crazy high platforms that contain a
real and functional Gameboy within the platform! I'm not sure how to feel about these except
that they are very cool display pieces and pretty nice advertisement pieces. One model is
bright yellow with the Gameboy embedded under the front part of the shoe. The kitschy,
cutesy part of the shoe has a little hole in the back part of the platform with Pikachu
perched right inside (How can we be sick of him when he's so darn cute?!).
Crave more in shoe news? Adidas and Nike have taken the hint that hip urbanites crave
their shoes as part of their essential wardrobe pieces. So designers are finally infiltrating
the city/street sneaker business. Fashion houses like Prada, Hermes and Chanel have offered
up their own versions or similar versions of trainers that have been put out by the likes of
Reebok and Converse. The companies have found that their sales are booming (check out the Nike
Air Woven!) and that their new shoes can be high in style and low in athletic performance boost.
Big and popular companies like Adidas are also reissuing old shoes and limiting the editions to
make the crowds want more. Of course this just means higher prices and competition for shoes!
Chako
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