The Converse Weapon is coming back again, but not in the same way you might have remembered it. Once the signature sneaker for Magic Johnson and Larry Bird back in 1986, the time-honored silhouette has been updated for a new crop of sneakerheads.
"The Weapon for us is an important silhouette," said design director for Converse CONS Chris Law, adding that the shoe is the third important for Converse behind the Chuck Taylor and Jack Purcell. "We’ve wanted to re-craft and re-master it in a respectful way, but modernize it enough so it can live for another thirty years."
Set to hit stores again this summer, the modified shoe will feature some tweaks in design. Here the CONS design director breaks down Everything You Need to Know About the New Converse Weapon.
The Converse Weapon is coming back again, but not in the same way you might have remembered it. Once the signature sneaker for Magic Johnson and Larry Bird back in 1986, the time-honored silhouette has been updated for a new crop of sneakerheads.
"The Weapon for us is an important silhouette," said design director for Converse CONS Chris Law, adding that the shoe is the third important for Converse behind the Chuck Taylor and Jack Purcell. "We’ve wanted to re-craft and re-master it in a respectful way, but modernize it enough so it can live for another thirty years."
Set to hit stores again this summer, the modified shoe will feature some tweaks in design. Here the CONS design director breaks down Everything You Need to Know About the New Converse Weapon.
The new CONS Weapon is a lot less bulky than the O.G. version.
Among some other things, but Law said the updated CONS Weapon has a slimmer midsole and is a lot lighter than the original. It also now has perforations, a new tongue construction, memory foam and refined padding on the inside for comfort. "It’s all about the craftsmanship and the detail," Law said. "There’s a lot of effort going into the shoe, from the height of the midsole to the texture of the outsole."
There's also more branding.
True sneaker historians might have noticed the amplified branding on the new version of the Weapon, versus the O.G. The design director says that this is an ode to the '80s, when logos were more prominent. "Cons was one of the originators of large branding, so we wanted to incorporate the name in there, in a louder expression," Law said.
The biggest challenge in remaking the Converse Weapon was not over-designing it.
How do you redo something that's already a classic? Law said that we the hardest part about updating the shoe: making it new, but not sacrificing the original silhouette's essence. "We only wanted to tweak it 20 percent instead of tweaking 60 percent and calling it the Weapon 2014," he said. "It was about just trying to be respectful and not over designing it."
There is a skate version of the new Cons Weapon.
It's not just for basketball anymore. A low-top version of the CONS Weapon with a Lunarlon footbed will be out this fall and you might catch it on the feet of CONS ambassadors like Pontus Alv, Louis Lopez, and Eli Reed.
The release date for the first set of colorways of the Cons Weapon is June 13.
Several colorways of the new Cons weapon will drop throughout the summer, but the first to release will be the Patchwork on June 13 for a retail price of $130.
The premium heather cotton "Ray" pack will drop on July 11 for $120 per sneaker.
A reflective "Mesh" pack will drop on August 9 for $120 at retailers like Ski Patrol and Imperial Purple.
There will also be some other updated colorways dropping in late August for $85.
