By Erin Broadley, Tuesday, Sep. 29 2009 @ 2:30PM
It's no secret that "sneaker enthusiasts" are prone to camping out for hours, sometimes days in advance of a sale or launch just to get their hands on limited-edition kicks. This past April we watched in awe as a group of hardcore sneaker fans waited six days outside Silver Lake's Undefeated store, rain or shine, for the release of Kanye West's specialty Nike shoe. This past weekend at Undefeated there was the release of another limited-edition shoe series designed by a musician, but this time the crowd was remarkably less hardcore. This time, no one was paying a guy $400 to stand in line for them and no one was using baby wipes in lieu of a shower while they waited.
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| Brandon Boyd explains the process behind the collaborative canvas shoe series |
By 7 a.m. on September 26, fans young and old (but mostly young) were already lined up outside Undefeated hoping to have a chance to score limited-edition TOMS shoes crafted from three, 6 ft by 14 ft canvases painted by artists Brandon Boyd (of Incubus fame) and Kristin Jai Klosterman. For those who love Blackberry commercials, TOMS is that company founded by Blake Mycoskie (the guy who insists he runs his entire business through his phone) that donates one pair of shoes to children in need for every pair you buy as part of the One for One Movement.
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| Line 'em up |
Those who opted to camp out only had to wait until 7 p.m. when the shoes went on sale to the public, and by the launch event's end around 10 p.m. nearly all 75 pairs of Boyd and Klosterman designed shoes had sold for $125 a pair. But shoes aside, the party held in the Undefeated parking lot behind the store was a welcoming mix of fans, friends and family of Boyd, a few dancing shopkeepers, one DJ dressed head to toe in purple, and a team of sponsors pimping free Sapporo and a new Acai berry liquor (so good, in fact, that within hours they were down to serving from display bottles).
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| Parking lot dance party |
Unfortunately Klosterman was a no-show due to her travel schedule returning from a trip to Israel, however L.A. Weekly caught up with Boyd before the doors opened to get more info on how this collaborative project came about.
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| Brandon Boyd stands with his shoes fashioned from hand-painted canvases |
