The unstoppable DC Shoes cofounder continues to scale new heights

Bradley Carbone; Photograph by Nate Bressler As creative director and executive vice president of DC Shoes, Damon Way regularly witnesses some of action sports’ most ridiculous feats—including the memorable Great Wall jump last June by his younger brother, Danny. But when asked about inspiration, he doesn’t credit the extreme sports world as his major influence. Instead, he rattles off the names of his friends, the early definers of pop–skate collab culture—Kaws, Shepard Fairey, Thomas Campbell and Phil Frost. These were the guys doing DC Artist Projects before you even had a clue.

Way back when, Damon was an up–and–coming skateboarder in California headed for sponsorship until, at the age of 15, he was struck in the temple during a fight. The blow caused an artery to burst in his head, causing partial paralysis and derailing his career on the board. Unbowed, he refocused his energy into several clothing lines before founding DC Shoes with Ken Block in 1993. Twelve years and countless design innovations later, DC Shoes is a $135 million entity.

Of all his achievements, Way may be proudest of the Artist Projects series, which enlists influential street artists to design DC shoes. “I didn’t feel a strong need to overmarket it because it started out grassroots,” he says. New projects include kicks with French graf artist André and graphic designer Ryan McGuinness and a collab with New York?based design studio SSUR.

So what’s next? “Recently I’ve been getting into Japanese, Cambodian and Korean psych music from the ’60s and ’70s,” says Way. “The whole psychedelic sound is definitely going to surface.” And you thought piano–key neckties sounded crazy.

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