It’s an early Friday evening in December and the Hudson Yards mall on the West Side of Manhattan is packed with people squeezing to get in front of each other. No, they’re not just frantic holiday shoppers looking to get the perfect, last-minute Christmas gift; they’re here to meet one man. No, it’s not Santa Claus, either. It’s Mark Wahlberg, and he’s doing a meet-and-greet at the pop-up space for his Municipal brand.
Municipal, which was founded in 2019, is an athleisure brand that creates the sneakers, sweats, shorts, underwear, T-shirts, and sweatshirts you’ve probably seen Wahlberg wearing on social media from head to toe.
It’s a surprising move for Wahlberg, who’s well-known in the sneaker world as a friend of Michael Jordan and the Jordan Brand, even receiving his own Air Jordan 4 in 2018 that resells for over $25,000.
But now he’s a Municipal guy, championing the brand’s Origin sneaker, an athleisure-targeted model that resembles a running shoe with a wide, flat sole. Something Wahlburger wears in the gym.
“He's fanatical about giving his fans and the people the very best,” says Municipal CEO and co-founder Harry Arnett, “The shoe for us is a massive step forward. Get it? Massive step forward, because it's an incredibly competitive category and we didn't want anyone to look at our shoe as like, ‘Oh, you guys are doing the same thing they're doing.’”
It’s still too early to gauge the longevity of Municipal. But Wahlberg is all in on it. And he wants it to be his lasting legacy. I had the chance to talk to him briefly at the pop-up. The interview is below.
I know you’re a big sneaker guy, you're a Jordan sneaker guy. But now you have your own sneaker brand, so how do you make the transition from one to the other?
It's a very comfortable transition. Let's just say that. Look, I've been a shoehead since I was a kid. I would get hand-me-down shoes. I begged my sister to buy me my first pair of Converse, Chuck Taylors; remember my first pair of Shell Toes. I was a size 1 when I got my Chuck Taylors, I was 2.5 when I got my first pair of Shell Toes.
I always wanted a shoe that had three main things, right? The look, the feel, and then to be able to have a performance shoe as well because you have something that's super comfortable. But then you can't run in it, you can't exercise in it, and then you can't do any kind of lateral or dynamic movement.
I wanted something that had all of them and so to be able to accomplish that, we really had to create our own shoe. I had opportunities to do collabs with everybody; I've done them, and we wanted our own thing. So, very easy to make that transition. The only Jordans you'll probably catch me ever wearing now are my Eastside Golfs. Those are my guys, and I'm also an investor in that brand, but when you're building a brand, you wear your own brand, that's it. If I'm buying something else, it's something that's going to inspire Municipal and those are usually some pretty pricey items, because what I want to do is I want to create a fabric that feels like something that you have to have when you put it on. And if it's a little bit more expensive than you used to, it better be special and it better be comfortable. So yeah, it was easy for me.
Your Wahlburgers Jordan is one of the most hyped shoes of all time. Have you thought about doing a Wahlburgers Municipal shoe?
Here's the great thing. We can do anything we want. It's our own company. Even to get the Jordan shoe made, it was a big process with getting approval from Mike and getting approval from the rest of the guys at the company. Obviously, the shoe was a well-sought after item, but yeah, we could do whatever we want with whoever we want. That's the great thing. Me and Harry Arnett and [part owner] Steve Levinson, we make all the decisions and we all have very similar tastes, but for us to do something with somebody else is going to have to be pretty cool.
Obviously fitness, massive thing to you. How much wear-testing did you put into the design of the shoe?
Quite a bit. I mean I wore the shoe for six, seven months. I mean we're testing the golf shoe. It's just the sole, and then the upper is going to be completely different. But wear-test, performance, all that stuff. I mean five, six months. I wore them into the ground and then let Harry and them then kind of go and continue to tweak until we figured out what was the right shoe to bring to market.
Were there any iterations of the shoe at first where you were like, "Hey, I really like this but it didn't work out"?
Quite a few. When it comes to Harry and I, we have similar taste. Our partner Lev is a bit more eccentric. He's a little bit more adventurous when it comes to fashion. So we would have conversations about what we liked and what we didn't like. My whole thing was, especially early on with the brand, I said I just wanted it to be something that I could actually wear and wear all the time. That was my style.
What's your go-to colorway for a shoe, if you could put anything on this shoe?
Being from Boston, it was always a lot of green, black, yellow. I was now listening to these guys a lot more with the neutral colors, but we also want to do stuff that pops a little bit. If you go into a Scheels or one of these great retailers, you'll see a lot of other brands that just look boring, but they kind of look the same, and our stuff, we want color.
I want everything that can match that; you don't have to wear the same color with the shoe, the sock, the shorts, the underwear, the T-shirt, the hat, everything. But you want to be able to match whichever part of the outfit you want to match. You should be able to do that.
Yeah, because I see you on Instagram all the time right now, head to toe, all the way to the underwear.
This is always the dream. This is what I told Harry. I said we got to be head to toe. We never really talked about shoes. And then my partner, our other partner, he didn't want me to do underwear because of the Calvin Klein association. I was like, we have to, and Harry was like, "Mark, you OK doing this?" I said, "Fuck yeah. What do you think?"
He was just respectful because of, look, not everything about Calvin Klein was a great experience. Some of it was good, some was bad. Pros and cons to everything, but that's why we always wanted to do our own thing. We've made a lot of things popular for other brands and made a lot of things cool and we said, "Why not do it ourselves and build our own?"
Is it much more satisfying to be able to wear everything that's yours?
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Listen, I'm hoping that we get as many people as possible to do the same. This hopefully will be the thing that I'm remembered for. Building a brand that hopefully will stand the test of time and last generations.
If this was something that I was trying to target my fans, I would've used my name, like other people, to create a brand.
That was never an idea?
Hell no. That's a bad idea. Let me tell you something. There's one Michael Jordan, there's one Jordan, everybody else find some other name, bro. Put your shit on some other name. That's all I'm saying. Come on in. That's all I'm saying, for me, because Michael, he's a once in a lifetime and beyond. He's just one of these iconic figures that we're lucky enough to experience being alive in the same lifetime and seeing him walk the earth. But everybody else, for me anyway, you got to create something else.
Are you going to send MJ a pair of your shoes or have you yet?
I haven't yet, but everybody else over there at the office is calling and sniffing around and, look, I loved doing shoes with Jordan. I have probably more Jordans than most people outside of Fat Joe and Khaled. And I was inspired by him to do that.
But this is something again that is hopefully going to target the masses and this will touch people who may never have seen any of my movies or certainly not listen to my music. I hope not, that'd be bad. But to be able to find something that's super cool that's made for them, that's aspirational. To remind somebody that, you know what? You want to be the best version of yourself. It doesn't matter where you start, there isn't anything you can't accomplish. And you always, if you feel good, you look good, you got a better chance of being successful. More confidence and more positivity and more swagger and stuff. So this is for everybody.
I'm not naive enough to think that I have a fanbase big enough to build a brand that we want to build. We want to build a global brand that's a content brand that does many different things. And we feel like we could do things that most people don't do. I mean, we're going to do things that will surprise a lot of people.
