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lead
as told to Russ Bengtson
Collaborations are a funny thing. Some can be oh-so simple, to the point where you're not sure why it took so many people to come up with something so basic. Others seem forced and hurried, rushed to market in order to capitalize on a particular trend or style. Then there are the labors of love. Frank the Butcher drew on childhood memories and chased down elusive original pairs to revive the classic adidas Forum High in three colorways of buttery suede — the black pair which will be exclusive to his Boylston Trading Co. Only 600 of each were produced, and they go on sale at midnight tonight, so you might want to keep a tab open. Or pre-order.
We talked to Frank a while back about the process and the project — click through to read more.
1
"I’ve always been obsessed with this shoe, and it’s basically the proper Forum High. Not the mid that has become the high, you know by default — it’s actually the Forum High. The first time I seen the Forum was in the late ‘80s, and I equated it to a drug dealer’s shoe. As I was coming up, the Forum was over $100, in ’88 - ’89, which was outrageous; you know it was retarded, so the only people that could actually wear that shoe were people with money. And just by the nature of the sneaker market back then, as you know, things were created in limited quantities, not because it was a strategic marketing plan or whatever, everything was super regional and that shoe wasn’t sold in a lot of places. So you know, it would pop up in Philly, Boston, Baltimore, NYC, wherever else.
"I remember it being a super lux, tonal suede with this crest embroidery on the side. It had gold foil, and it had a basketball and it said ‘Forum.’ I always would talk to adidas about it like ‘yo you remember this?’ [adidas:] ‘No, no, no’ [Him]: ‘Any archives, any pictures?’ [adidas:] ‘No we don’t really have anything like that, a lot of that shit’s in Germany. So I started doing the research myself. I hit up a couple dudes — DJ EMZ in New York, Air Rev, who is a renowned sneaker guy that was at Puma then, and DJ Mighty Mi from Philadelphia that was in the rap group High and Mighty, he’s in Las Vegas now. Air Rev, you know Adam [Leaventon], he’s the one that plugged me in with everybody else. I knew of EMZ, but through that process of trying to find the shoe I got to know EMZ, and got to know how this shoe came about."
2
"So I finally got 20-year-old samples in my hands — Rev sent me a red one that kinda faded to a pink over the years, and EMZ sent me — a navy blue one, yea it was like a faded blue. Both these had been through the wringer, nah mean, like 20 years put away or whatever. Then I linked up with adidas like, ‘hey we’ve found what we’ve been looking for, I found what I always told you guys about.’ So anyway I went to Portland and basically just put on a little presentation, let them know the value of the shoe to us, you know to me and the guys that shop, the value of the shoe to Boston, which — all this internet coverage is great, but in reality we’re selling to our city. So we were trying to create something that would resonate in our city, and hopefully would catch on everywhere else, but you know Boston was a major adidas city. Back in the day that’s what it was, then they slowly started disconnecting with the youth, the youth moved on, and it’s hard to get ‘em back. So this is one of those steps to try and do something that will kind of create some energy for adidas in Boston and in general."
3
"So I went there, showed them the shoe, showed them the presentation, spoke to them about it. Explained to them the fact that, you know someone like Nike, regardless of how long the Air Force has been around they subliminally, and through focused marketing, they’ve always kept people in tune with where the AF-1 came from, you know with anniversary parties, celebrations, and regardless of the customers age, there’s always a hint to when it came out. I mean there’s always a lace lock with the year on the shoe. So I turned to everyone in the room and I was like ‘can anybody tell me the first time the Forum dropped?’ And nobody knew! I mean people knew approximates and what have you but no one knew the year. So I just explained to them this shoe was so valuable just to sneaker guys in general and to basketball sneakers, and the first stage of the sneaker craze — this was a basketball shoe, it was expensive, it was beautiful, and it was hard to get, and that’s what it was, that’s what made it great. So I tried to explain to them the value of the shoe and the value of bringing it back, and they’ve always had a hard time reintroducing the Forum because they’re trying to drop this shoe with such heritage but they’re trying to drop it with no information, like ‘here.’ Kids are like ‘ok, what is this?’"
4
"Basically I was just letting them know that to reconnect with kids today you gotta give them a little bit of help, you have to help them help you, and you know, a little information goes a long way. So I wanted to re-present the shoe in the right way, surround it with some energy and some information for kids to be able to make their own decision. I think when the shoe is put in it’s proper context it means something. When you just drop it out the blue and it has a Star Wars motif or it has a Def Jam, Jeezy snowman on the tongue, a lot of these things muddy the information and the value of it. It doesn’t do it justice; you gotta make it valuable before you start doing crazy things to it.
"Today is a different game. Shelf life is really small. And I’ve been through it, I’ll do a collaboration and it’ll leak early, you know pics to the web and I’m scared cause it’s not out yet but if kids see it two months prior to the release date they’re like it’s old, shelf life is so accelerated. You need to do something with some substance, you need to do something that really sticks to the ribs, you know so this was that, trying to put something together for them. Plus it meant something to me personally, so it was always a pleasure to work something that means something to me. And if I could make it mean something to somebody else that’s even better."
5
"When I said they were the Forum High, even internally at adidas, everyone assumed that I meant the mids until I started bringing physical references. You know the thing is, we like brands, and we’re in tune with whenever we can trace back that inception date, like ‘5th grade I started liking sneakers. A lot of people work at these companies, but they just work there. It’s not like ‘yo I was obsessed with adidas and finally I work with adidas’ — sometimes that’s not the case. A person like me, a person like you, we’re trying to explain something that predates their knowledge of adidas. Predates their interest in adidas. So I was really trying to explain like ‘hey this is what happened, I’m on the handball court and these drug dealer dudes had the velour suit and the sneakers and it was so valuable and Boston was on fire, and they cost over a hundred dollars and it was king shit! It was royal.
"Talking to EMZ, and talking to Adam, there was a crest pack back in the day, but not in the sense of the word ‘pack’ as we use it today, like when three things drop at the same time, sam material story or whatever, but there was a crest Stan Smith that EMZ sent to me. It didn’t look that good, you know it was what it was at the time. I heard a couple stories that the crest was developed to rival the decorative Troop and British Knight situation back then. That’s one man’s opinion, kind of urban folklore. They’re saying ‘hey ’88-89 Troop was poppin’ and LL and the crowns and British Knights had the crest,’ so they were trying to create something, and this is just opinion again, might have rivaled that thing. But because it was adidas it came off a little differently, it came off like ‘oh shit a crest.’ So even though they were trying to talk to that customer it didn’t come off as cheesy or contrived as Troop or British Knights. And its can still be still relevant today —like British Knights tried to come back a couple years ago, but this shit still means something.
"We took the existing crest because the embroidery was so crappy — again there’s no actual archive references or graphics — so we took the crest that was on there, you know from far it looked but up close you could tell the embroidery techniques from back then weren’t so good, so we redrew it, kept it as close to the original as we could, and made it better. So it’s still referencing the original, it’s still the old crest just with modern updates to make it readable, make it translate.
"I’m hoping that it means something. I’m hoping that when it drops it gets some attention and it means enough for them to consider bringing it back in the line. It’s high, it could be higher than the Air Force 1 High, I believe it’s actually higher than that, but in context, if presented correctly, it could mean something and I’m hoping they run with it. It’s part of their heritage. adidas has so much heritage, man they have the German heritage then they have a whole lineage of American heritage. Then they have a whole history of American urban heritage. They have so much history, way beyond a Nike and anything else, that they don’t have to make up, they don’t have to try to put together, they could just open up their history books and pull it out. They don’t really utilize it as much as they could, but I’m hoping that this could be one of those steps in the right direction."
