Sneakers, Their Story is Our Own
Part 4: Customisation, Intimacy, Sneakers and The Conclusion.
In this fourth and final article designer and recent PJAIT graduate Stanislav Sergeichuk discusses customisation and intimacy, while wrapping up his research into sneaker culture.
How can customisation create intimacy from a design perspective?
While dozens of new models and colours of sneakers are released daily, sneakerheads crave even more uniqueness and individual approaches to their wardrobe. This desire has grown into an independent culture of customisation, in which symbolism, unusual materials and own ideas are appreciated. In addition to sneakers and jeans jackets with prints, customisation now applies to even such serious structures as banks. And everyone even can choose how his or her own debit card will look.
Today it is important for many people that a thing emphasizes the individuality of the owner. Many contemporary people want to feel like designers and create a truly unique and interesting thing by customising it.
According to the Macmillan Dictionary, customisation is defined as: “the act or process of changing the way something looks or works so that it is exactly what you want or need”.[1] In a broad sense, customisation is the transformation of a particular thing for a specific person. The object of “tuning” can be anything: both old and brand new things. To the old things, customization can “give a new life”.[2] For example, to decorate a tired white T-shirt or tear classic jeans, or maybe remake a jacket from the 1980s that nostalgia does not allow us to throw away. Nowadays, more often, people don’t this themselves, but with the help of specialists from fashion brands.
The brand new thing, for example with sneakers, people customise when they want to make them unique and special. For example, they put their initials or patches on them (often called personalisation). The price for such a “service” is not always affordable, but the result is always pleasant — a person receives a unique thing in their hands, in their favorite colour or with their own initials, one of a kind, and therefore more valuable and intimate for them.[3]
The trend for customisation is the return of 1970s fashion. Then in New York, people from the hip-hop realm remade jeans jackets for themselves. Since then, the desire for uniqueness has only increased: in a world where things are produced in huge runs, the very concept of individuality is erased, and finding something that others do not have is very difficult.[4] Shopping in foreign countries stores does not help either. The assortment in chain stores in different countries has become almost identical. Moreover, the growing popularity of informed consumption (people do not want to have a wardrobe with hundreds of fashionable, but essentially unnecessary things for them) and, as a result, there is an increase in handmade fashion and the desire to feel like a designer, to get positive emotions from creativity. During the creative process, a person creates a truly unique thing, which subsequently becomes very valuable and significant for him, acquiring an intimate meaning.
As a result, according to the Business of Fashion study in 2018, customisation became one of the significant trends. More and more buyers want to show through clothes not only the awareness of trends, but also their values, to feel an intimate connection with a unique thing. Therefore, customisation has become a real must for millennials, who always broadcast their inner world through clothes. That is why fashion brands — both luxury and mass-market — are increasingly creating special atelier services or adding a customisation function to websites.[5]
Customisation service is offered today by many brands — from couture fashion to sports. People can create their own shoe design in the Nike ID service. On the Nike website, a client can customise certain models of sneakers, choosing their own colours for laces, soles, etc. Ralph Lauren, Louis Vuitton and Dior also have custom-made shoes. Thus, a person creates a unique model of sneakers.
In addition, some people prefer to create or customise things with their own hands and sneakers are no exception. A do-it-yourself thing becomes a part of a person’s “world”, a subject of pride, and becomes a thing with a very intimate meaning. For example, on sites like instructables.com, people publish a variety of tutorials on how to customize sneakers and other things with their own hands and make them unique or making them more useful, creating new properties.[6] Everyone can find a design suitable for them, somehow change it or create a completely new, unique, design and share it with the others.
Thus, it is important to emphasise that many people prefer to create things with their own hands, thereby giving them a certain uniqueness. Old and well-worn sneakers can be turned into unique and fashionable ones that will attract the attention of others and be a subject of pride of a person. And what is also important, do-it-yourself or custom-made sneakers are often much cheaper than expensive exclusive models and, thanks to their own work invested in them, they can be much more intimate for a person than those produced in a factory.
Many famous brands (like Nike ID) allow people to customise any item from their portfolio in way they want: changing the colour, choosing the material, etc. However, for many people, custom things from famous companies do not carry any cultural value and are not something intimate that they would like to wear for a long time. Even conventionally “custom” items from famous brands are sold and produced in huge quantities and do not convey those feelings and emotions as things created independently.
Big brands try to meet the needs of consumers and take people’s interest in customising things, adding customisation options to their portfolio, while making good money on it. Shoes customised in this way have absolutely no intimate and deep meaning for a person, but become just another unusual pair of shoes.
A person’s desire to express him or herself, to participate in the creation of his things is successfully monetised and brings significant profits to large corporations. As a counterpart to customisation of large corporations, many people prefer to change and give uniqueness to their shoes on their own or with the help of small design studios, thereby giving their shoes a truly unique look. For example, Mack House studio, based in Toronto, gives an opportunity to come and customise peoples’ own sneakers. Using various tools, a person can customise sneakers with his or her own hands, or a professional artist can do it for them.[7] Self-customised shoes become a sign of protest and an expression of a person, their disagreement with something, thereby acquiring a very personal and intimate meaning for them. By creating custom things, people can show their disagreement with the system, with the usual way of things, broadcasting their protest to the people around with the appearance of their shoes and other clothes.
Thus, in the desire to be special, to stand out from the crowd, a person tries to customise his shoes and other things of the wardrobe. By customising things with one’s own hands, a person gives them intimate meanings, making them truly special and reflecting in them their values and their own inner world. Personalised things become an extension of a person’s personality, and intimacy acquired through special things becomes truly valuable to a person.
Conclusion
To conclude, this sereis of articles has explored the role of intimacy in the context of sneakers, their customisation, and their exchange and symbolic value. But it doesn’t mean that this concept can only be appliedonly to sneakers. We can use the lens of intimacy to analyse the relevance and value of contemporary consumer goods. Or we ask: how do things relate to us, what do they mean to us?
In Yuniya Kawamura’s book about sneakers she remarks:
“…we see that, like clothing, it has adornment and status functions in addition to protective functions”.[8]
Referencing Spike Lee’s film “Do the Right Thing” with its “Your Jordans Are F***ed Up!” scene which perfectly shows the beginning of the sneaker subculture in the 90’s and describes the symbolic value behind the sneakers for different communities; while websites such as StockX perfectly depict an exchange value; or the ideology of DIY to add personal intimacy to an item, we can make conclusion on how versatile sneakers can be.
Sneakers have a great symbolic value for many people. Sneakers have become not just shoes for everyday life. They sometimes become a decor in the house, a picture, or an interior item. Some of the shoes have never been imagined before on a girl with a dress, e.g. Air Jordans, look stylish and fresh. Moreover, there are many contemporary documentaries that describe the whole sneaker culture from A to Z. For example, the series of “You Ain’t Got These” premiered on Quibi on the 6th of April 2020, points out how the sneaker culture actually started and what’s behind the sneaker and their link to your identity. Not to mention the resellers, who make a lot of money selling shoes.
Because of that, we can conclude that not only hands feed people nowadays, but also feet.
The understanding of this theory allows us to be more aware in relations built up with the goods we see and face everyday in our life. That’s why I chose sneakers as an example of a contrast, on which an item can show up in different dimensions and tensions for different purposes, ideologies, subcultures, etc.
I will conclude these articles and answer the research question “To what extent can the concept of intimacy explain the symbolic value of the sneaker?” in a very short way:
Sneakers are money for brands, sneakers are money for re-sellers, sneakers are culture for sneakerheads, sneakers are a tool for athletes, but how many sides of sneaker are there?
[1]Macmillan Dictionary, accessed on 01.09.20, https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/customization#customization__1
[2]Jennie Kermode, Customizing Your Old Clothes, accessed on 01.09.20, http://www.startsewing.co.uk/customizing-your-old-clothes.html
[3]Marco De Vries, Fashion Retailing in an Era of Customization and Personalization, accessed on 01.09.20, https://www.openbravo.com/blog/fashion-retailing-in-an-era-of-customization-and-personalization/
[4]Bakari Kitwana, The Hip-Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture(Civitas Books; New Ed edition, 2005), p. 198.
[5]McKinsey & Company, The State of Fashion 2018(2019), p. 44–45.
[6]A. Rachel, Customize Your Shoes, https://www.instructables.com/id/Customize-your-Shoes/ (accessed on 01.09.20)
[7]Self-Service Sneaker Customization Studio & Experience, accessed on 01.09.20,https://www.mackhouseinc.com/
[8]Yuniya Kawamura, Sneakers: Fashion, Gender, and Subculture(Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), p. 946.
The articles you have read are an abridged version of Stanislav Sergeichuk’s thesis. To read the whole thing please contact us.
