Invisible

This fall my friend Chris wasn’t able to attend the rescheduling of the Jon Batiste Perspectives performance at Carnegie Hall, so he thoughtful gifted the tickets to my wife and I. This was a date night we very much needed because work and family had been a lot.

Outside of the theater was a long, moving line for folks with tickets, but we needed to grab out tickets at will call in the center of the building. This line had about 50 people but it was moving smoothly through the velvet ropes with at least 30 minutes before the show was set to begin.

With about 25 people in front of us I noticed 2 young gentlemen standing to the side of an open are in the rope. Their casual positioning was a familiar sign of the preparation to cut the line. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have thought much of their transgression but their choice of queue abuse set me off.

My cumulative observations were being calculated and the final tally needed to be shared.

There were 10–12 people that these young white men could have walked in front of that they decided not to. At this point there were 2 Black women — mother & daughter — in front of my wife and I. There were no Black people behind us.

When the 2 young white men casually stepped in front of the 2 Black women in front of me they did not make eye contact; instead they simply shimmied into the movement.

“I’m sorry,” I spoke softly, “are these guys with you?”

“We don’t know them,” the 2 Black women answered knowingly.

“Excuse me,” my voice raised, “the line begins back there,” I spoke to their listening backs.

The 2 young white men turned and pointed to their lefts. “They told us to get in line here.”

Slightly louder I replied, “But the line clearly begins back there.”

Without a fight came the response, “We can get behind you if you’d like.”

I simply smiled as the 2 young white men let the only 4 Black people in line move in front of them.

“Thank you,” said the 2 Black women in front of us.

If you’re reading this and you don’t understand what just happened, then please reread the title.

The Fight Song

When I became a Design Director in NSW there was an initiation of singing your team’s fight song in front of the team. i though very little of this request but I was caught off guard when asked during my first meeting so I declined.

However, before the net staff meeting of about 25 people, there was obvious tension between myself and the business director. The team had worked a certain way before I’d arrived and the collective design direction was being threatened by my existence. Over the next two weeks I was invited into his office so he could tell me how I was supposed to do my job.

His efforts had little effect on how I proceeded to lead my team but I enjoyed our little talks where he would close with the need for me to fit into the team’s dynamic. Singing a song at the staff meeting would help to eliminate any tensions that might be growing because I was the new guy.

As you might guess, two more staff meetings close with his invitation for me to sing and my cordial “no thank you.”

While this $1B category is going through tumultuous change over, I’m stopped in the hallway repeatedly by his leadership team — not to discuss the state of the business or the team’s culture, but to ask me to ‘sing a song’ so everyone can get on with their lives.

At the closing of the very next staff meeting the business director lets the team know that I’m probably a little shy and need their support, so he begins to lead the room of 25 with a slow clap in song.

I immediately pull out my phone and begin recording this pre-serenade for 20 seconds as they await my song. Eventually their awkward clapping ends and we depart the conference room sans musical entertainment.

As I walk by my Creative Director’s office he yells for me to come in and shut the door. The business is in disarray, our new VP of Design is stressed about his first Concept Debut and everybody’s on edge.

“What is it I keep hearing about some song?” he asks with understandable confusion.

I simply show him the video of 21 white people clapping for me to sing a song at staff meeting, lead by our smiling business director.

“Looks like you have this under control,” he laughed.

That season our design team relaunched the Huarache and Max 97 and introduced the Roshe Run.

Erasure

When my friend Jason asked me to help out a friend with design I wasn’t too interested. I had retired from footwear and wanted to try new industries. Jason asked me to give the opportunity a look.

After about 2 months of rejecting the conversation, Ye simply asked me to come to Paris to see for myself. “We just need to make one shoe hit!” he told me.

I entered a creative meeting with no introduction and witnessed with confusion a lack of creativity that I had grown up seeing in Beaverton. No one in the room was listening to Ye. At the most they were simply dismissive. At some point I interjected — still with no formal introduction — with ideas on how to evolve a couple of designs.

“Looks like Jeff has this from here,” Ye said as he and Virgil left the hotel conference room.

A room full of Adidas people looked at me with wonder. Honestly, we were all slightly confused.

For about 3 years I traveled to Calabasas and Guangzhou every other month to work on Yeezy. The first six months was spent re-engineering a 750 and 350 that was already in the works. The hope was that I would move to LA to help build out a studio but my kids were thriving in NYC so that wasn’t going to happen. The next 2+ years was spent building a team and process from far away knowing they could grow without me.

Ye understood that I had little interest in the fanfare or the drama so he left me out of it. I wanted to work. I wanted to build new product. I wanted to build product a different way.

In the first couple of introductions Ye made certain to introduce me as the Nike designer he’d brought to the table because that offered merit. I told him I had no interest in being the ‘Nike guy’ on his team. If that was all he wanted I was happy to introduce him to other designers that would satisfy that qualtifier. I had no beef with Nike so I didn’t want to be a part of whatever beef he had with my ex-employer.

Ye completely understood and we got to to work. He kept me out of pictures. Out of the stories. Out of the spotlight. I had no interest in going to concerts or runway shows.

I never signed any paper work. I just worked and got paid.

I was happy with that arrangement because I just wanted to watch my kids play soccer and football and basketball.

Honestly, a year in I wasn’t certain that Ye recognized what I was doing beyond giving him updates on product in and outside of Adi. Every conversation was pointed but rushed. He only cared about the product.

One day in NYC I casually asked the apparel team if my 16 year old son could fit model for a couple of days because he was interested in the process. Everyone panicked.

I typically steered clear of the apparel team because they always appeared shook.

“You have to ask Kanye!” I was told as though I had asked to change every design to polka dots.

I felt odd not feeling odd when I asked Ye and he simply said, “Cool.”

But by the time my son arrived after school even I made sure to keep him low key because everyone was on edge. “Text me when you get on the elevator and I’ll come get you,” I told him.

While the space in Milk Studios was easily 3,000 square feet, Ye was having a meeting with about 6 important folks at the entrance. The vibe was tense so I attempted to stealth my way to the elevator bank and back. On re-entry Ye jumped up from his chair and ran over to Jream and I.

I had no idea what to expect. No one ever did.

In Calabasas I’d brought my youngest son into the studio a few times. Ye acknowledged Xavier but it was never that big of a deal.

“Jream!” Ye embraced my oldest. “I just wanted you to know how important your father is to everything we are doing and how much he’s already done for us. Make yourself at home!”

My son said, “Thank you,” and we moved into the studio.

On more than one occasion Ye made certain that I was seen and acknowledged without putting me on public display. I felt valued without exploitation.

Eventually the team grew — as expected — and I became less necessary. The Yeezy teams inside and outside of Adidas had grown. Ye was also unhappy that I was working on my own things — like building a factory — so we eventually parted ways. The last meeting was a week after the red hats became part of story. I had zero interest in explaining that to my impressionable kids.

In comparison to that roller coaster ride, Adidas tried their best to pretend that I didn’t exist. In the beginning I wasn’t invited to meetings intensionally. When the revised 750 was completed — the initial production wasn’t ready for prime time — Adidas finally invited me to Germany to see the samples.

As I waited to bored my JFK Lufthansa flight to Germany, Ye calls me.

“Are you on the plane? Don’t get on the plane!” Ye tells me like I’m in some spy movie. “They’re here. They flew out to Portland with the samples.”

No one at Adidas told me.

Intensionally.

But in those early days all approvals in some way went through me. So they had to wait.

For me.

So Ye made them talk to me.

Forced them.

I laughed when ignoring me turned into courting me with “help Kanye make the right decisions for his brand” which translated to them wanting me to do what was best for Adidas. I laughed because they didn’t sign my checks and his brand succeeded in spite of their immediate wishes.

Years after I’d moved on I’d hear rumors about the good and gad of the relationship but I never thought the end would look like this. But honestly, I didn’t really care.

I didn’t care until I saw the design patents that didn’t include my name.

I don’t really care for me. I’m happy with 1/1000th the money for 100% anonomity.

But I know that middle schoolers that look like me approach pre-Algebra in a different way when they see what I do for a living. Sneakers are currency and my path is still rare. My mother taught math and my father was a scientist.

I don’t really care if the world thinks Salehe designed the Lunar Grand or NSW started with the Ten Pack or any of the other hype that drives the culture. I love them equally, but I’m more Aveni than Hatfield.

But the patent does not sit well at all.

I don’t care about the sideshows and distractions that are ‘white lives matter’ and sales strategies for billion dollar brands.

Those details aren’t in the records that the kids that look like me can point to forever. Forever.

So this will be a topic of discussion. Someone will read this and I assume the Black man with all of the drawings and emails and texts and sketches that built the 350 v2 will be the appropriate footnote like Bruce Kilgore and Peter Moore. Someone will make the right decision.

For the kids.

Good things.