Hi Vogue, I hope you are well.
Welcome to your new video and welcome to my home,
mi casa.
Welcome to Vlogue,
the series where we discover fashion from every angle.
And today, in this episode, we're taking a closer look at our sneakers.
Get ready, and let's go!
Kids, welcome to Miss Mahfouf's classroom for Sneakers 101.
Get out your notebooks, or I'll be cross!
The history of sneakers begins in the 19th century, in 1892,
with the creation of a company called Uniroyal,
ladies and gentlemen, specialized in the manufacture of rubber objects,
clothing and accessories.
In 1917, this same company owned a brand
that marketed shoes with a rubber sole and a small canvas upper.
This brand was Keds.
It's spelled with an "s", but it's called "ked'z".
These canvas shoes made much less noise than classic ones.
They were quickly called sneakers, from the English "sneak up on",
which means to approach by surprise.
And that's a pretty cool anecdote.
You can tell it to people at parties,
to look like a very smart person thanks to Professor Mahfouf.
The same year, another brand created a pair,
that you know for sure: the Chuck Taylor All Star by Converse.
Converse was born.
The All-Star was one of the very first models
to invade the universe of a popular sport in the United States:
basketball.
As you can see,
the history of sneakers is closely linked to that of sports,
no surprise there.
For basketball, canvas and vulcanized soles reigned supreme until the 1970s,
when Puma made the first pro model, in suede, for basketball player Clyde Frazier.
And it happens to be a variation of another model you may know,
the Puma Suede,
worn in 1968 by runner Tommie Smith at the Mexico Games.
My darlings soon arrived:
Adidas joined the movement and launched the Superstar,
the first leather basketball shoe.
Those ones.
The Top Ten and the Americana would follow right after
and, at the time, Adidas equipped 75% of NBA teams,
which was quite significant.
In 1984, it was a rookie of the Chicago Bulls who revolutionized the game of sneakers
by signing a sponsorship contract with the famous tick, Nike.
You know him, he is a star, the one and only Michael Jordan.
Along with other athletes, Jordan's icon status contributed to both the American,
and then the worldwide influence of basketball.
The sneakers eventually arrived on the streets.
Music.
Please put it in the video, otherwise I'll look like a crazy teacher.
At the same time,
a tailor in Harlem blurred the boundaries between luxury and sneakers.
This man was Dapper Dan.
His favorite activity was to hijack logos and fabrics of the big houses
and create new fashion garments to dress rappers.
We can say it, it was the beginning of a great love story
between fashion and the streets.
With basketball,
other sports would contribute to popularizing sneakers massively.
Hello Stan Smith, hello Mohammad Ali, hello athletics, hello soccer.
As everything was happening, hip-hop settled in the ’90s.
Sneakers continued to spread.
Logically, in the early 2000s,
the luxury industry, via Japanese designers, was interested
and wanted to reinterpret this oh-so popular accessory.
We think of Junya Watanabi and, of course, Y-3.
The following years,
it was Adidas who confirmed this reciprocal interest
between luxury and sneakers with the designers:
Yohji Yamamoto, Jeremy Scott and Kanye West with the Yeezy.
Clearly, sneakers were no longer just comfortable shoes
that can only be worn with sportswear or streetwear outfits.
They had become a desired and desirable object, so appreciated and collected
that some people were ready to pay 1.8 million dollars to own the Grail.
And that's what we're going to try to decipher, guys.
Kids, grab your binders, your notebooks, your school bags,
your little snacks, your triangle sandwiches, we're going on a field trip.
First of all, we're going to go and see Selma, who is a big sneaker fan
and who has a big collection.
Let's go, follow me!
Well, stay there since you are behind a screen, but come on.
-Hello! -Hi.
-Nice to meet you. -Nice to meet you too.
Welcome to my home!
What?!
Are there any places like this in real life?
It's like we're in New York.
Can you tell me where we are and who you are?
My name is Selma, I live here.
I work in communications and research
and I believe I collect these.
-Is this your personal collection? -This is my personal collection.
-What is your shoe size? -37.
Oh good, I'm fine.
I would definitely steal some Adidas.
Selma, can I ask you how many pairs you have?
When you love them, you don't count. They're not all here.
Basically, when I moved, there were a lot of pairs
that I really liked, but I knew I wasn't wearing.
So these are mostly pairs that I wear
or pairs that I got between now and a year and a half ago.
When I moved, I had 80 pairs.
Each pair has its own story and that's what we're trying to understand
with this video, this episode:
how did the sneaker go from a sport accessory to a fashion accessory overnight?
Tell us about your love for sneakers.
To start, I'll go back to the sneaker community.
I think it's always been there.
What you're seeing now, though,
is social media bringing it to light, so to speak.
Sneakers have never been so hype.
Six years ago, I was wearing sneakers and it didn't look good.
It was hard to feel like you were chic with a pair of sneakers.
Five years ago, when I went to the Chanel show, nobody wore sneakers.
Now it's a crazy thing.
Even Valentino, Fendi, everyone has their pairs of sneakers.
When I arrived, I thought I would see shelves where the pairs don't move
-and are very clean. Yes, I see.
Those shoes can become very valuable.
-But you don't care, you wear them? -I don't care.
Are there some pairs that you don't wear in order to resell them?
Technically, if I really wanted to resell them, I would keep them deadstock.
Deadstock, what’s that?
Deadstock, DS, means it's never been worn.
And that's how it has the best value.
And you don't have any DS?
Typically, there's the Adidas Pharrell that I got
that hasn't been released yet, but I haven't had time to take it out yet.
-Can you show it to us? -Yes.
So this one is DS?
Yes, it's DS with the whole package.
-Oh! -Yes.
-Is it expensive? -No, but don't worry.
-I don't want to do anything stupid. -No worries.
Very cute.
Yes, it's cute.
You don't buy your sneakers directly from the store?
It depends.
Basically, at the time, there were the pairs I bought in the store,
and the pairs I bought online.
The stores did not actually have small sizes.
The classic process is that you go to the showroom,
you make your orders,
and six months later, your pair arrives at your store
and people go and buy them.
But back then, guys didn't buy sneakers for women.
And so as a girl, you really had to build a strong network.
So, I used to go to Berlin, London, etc.
And I knew the right people, the right stores, the owners, etc.
You see them ten times a year.
Which pair was the most difficult to cop?
Yeah, I know the jargon, we say 'cop'.
That pair you see there, that's already lived a lifetime,
because it was worn by two people.
Okay.
It came out three or four years ago, something like that.
It was a collaboration between Kiko and Asics.
I looked and looked and looked. It was way too expensive…
What do you mean?
It came out at what price and it was resold at what price?
It was around 200 or something like that.
And now you can find them at 1,000 euros.
Okay.
I'll trade you my Stan Smiths if you like.
Thank you for welcoming us, in your humble home,
your humble sneaker collection.
I've learned a lot.
And now, we're going to try to understand how things work on the other side,
since we're going to a retailer called Kikikickz.
What is the relationship between buyers and resellers?
I think people still blame resellers
for driving up market prices, when I think it's all about marketing,
the brand in question, quantities and so on, and it's much more complex than that.
Kikikickz, here we come!
We're going to meet Mathis and Kilian from Kikikickz,
which is a sneaker reseller
and they are okay to answer the 1,500,000 questions I have in mind.
Hi!
-How are you doing? -How are you?
Kilian?
-Mathis. -Mathis.
You just moved here, and there are bricks around us
with a lot of sneakers, because you are sneaker resellers.
Explain to me what that little "re" in front of seller is.
It means we are not the first to sell the sneakers.
We are on a parallel market where we will resell a sneaker
that has already been sold by retailers like Nike, like Adidas.
Does this business work quite well?
Yes, and it hasn't even really exploded yet.
It feels like sneakers have really taken over the whole economy
and our generation.
But we're just at the very beginning.
So, do you think I can resell my Stan Smiths at a high price?
If they're on display here, maybe.
Every pair on display here has a story
and people won't necessarily buy the sneaker because it's beautiful,
but because it tells a story and people can relate to it.
There is a stock downstairs.
-Can you show us or not? -Absolutely.
It's funny, because with the lamps like that, it feels like being in a museum.
You display them like works of art.
Okay, the stock is over there.
But are we sure these are all real?
Of course.
Because, I mean, if I knew the pair sells for a lot of money,
I'd try to make the same one.
Every pair that comes in is checked, with a UV lamp.
And it's about the smell.
How can you tell if a pair is fake or real?
The smell of the glue.
Each pair and each brand has a particular smell.
And so, we see them…
It's like perfume noses, that's what's so interesting.
You see them all day long, with their noses in the sneakers…
-Sniffing the sneakers. -Sniffing the sneakers.
And even for the best-made models, you have to buy counterfeits
to compare in real time the fake and the real.
So, if I go to your Google history, I can see: fake Yeezy, Adidas.
Okay, I get it.
Have these pairs been ordered by clients or is it just stock?
It's stock, it's anticipation for a future order from a client,
from a customer of the website.
Okay, and how do you manage to have so many pairs, Yeezy,
that are so much in demand?
We know how to surround ourselves with the best buyers.
-And the buyers, where are they? -They're upstairs.
Let's go see them?
More pairs.
Here, we're at the heart of the company, and we have all the want to buyers.
We're with Antoine, who is a purchasing manager
and who is going to explain to us what the word "want to buyer" is.
Want to buyer, it's a variation of the verb "want to buy".
And so, these 2.0 buyers help us on a daily basis
to find between 50 and 100 pairs per day.
Some want to buyers have specialties, like Yeezy.
-They know exactly where to find Yeezys. -Who is the Yeezy specialist?
There is one called Luigi.
He's really not bad on Yeezys.
After that, Jessie does pretty well on Jordans.
And why don't brands just stock more?
If you make more stock, it creates less rarity
and it's the notion of rarity that brands want to create.
And we also do marketing for brands.
They know that by creating rarity on this product or that product,
for 10, 15 or 20 years,
all the products that are going to be released will explode.
-Hello! -Hello!
-Is this the Customer service department? -Yes.
There are hieroglyphs on your walls.
There are little hearts.
I think they're having fun in here.
I didn't ask you, but how old are you?
-20. -And 24.
The average age of the company is about 22-23.
So you're part of this generation
that is a new generation of entrepreneurs and understands new issues.
Awesome!
I never thought I'd say this sentence one day, but can we go sniff some shoes?
-This one or that one? -Both.
So, that's the Safflower.
-Right. -Is it?
That's the 700V3.
Without reading the label.
Okay.
It smells like a shoe, I couldn't possibly…
There's a glue smell that's pretty special.
You can recognize the Adidas smell of glue right away.
Really?
Can you tell the difference between the glues?
The glues between the real ones and the fake ones.
It allows us to differentiate a real pair from a fake pair.
For example, here, when we sniff, we can directly see
that it is a pair that was made in Vietnam.
On the fake ones, the smell usually stings the nose much more.
There are a lot of little…
Alerts?
Exactly.
Okay.
What was the most difficult pair to cop?
It was the Air Yeezy Zen Grey, the one right behind you.
That one?
Yeah, I made maybe 500 or 600 calls to get it.
And you keep it for yourself?
Now I keep it as a collector's item.
Okay,
does it scare you if I get a little closer like this?
-You're nervous right now? -As long as you don't touch it, it's cool.
Okay, and is this the most expensive one?
No, not necessarily.
What's the most expensive pair in the collection?
You might have heard recently, it's the Jordan and Dior collaboration.
Okay.
Right there.
Yes.
It's worth between eight…
and some sizes can go as high as 14,000-15,000 euros.
And what was the original price?
1,900 euros.
And why do you think it went from being a hardcore sports accessory
to a fashion accessory?
The streetwear culture has really guided all the new trends.
And you see, now, the fashion houses that are linked to streetwear?
It's now the pairs that work best.
For example, the Dior, which is really interesting,
is that it's one of the first times that a brand touches the Nike swoosh
and they're going to use some pretty luxurious materials.
The meeting of the two allowed people
to realize that this object was not just a street object.
-Thank you, guys, for having us. -It was a great pleasure.
Shall we grab a pair and go?
Now folks, let's go to the temple of sneakerheads,
it's a store called Sneakersnstuff and it's nearby.
I'm going there with my race car.
Are you coming?
-Hello! -Hello!
Hi Didier.
Didier, can you tell us who you are, what you do and where we are?
My name is Didier, I am the manager of the SNS store.
Our store has been open in Paris for five years.
We are a Swedish company, so we have stores all over the world:
Stockholm, London, Berlin, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo.
Are you sellers or resellers?
Basically, the brand sells to resellers, us.
Now, a third group has been added:
we sell to the client and the client can resell his pair.
Five years ago, resellers were a bit of a niche group.
But now, everyone who wins a raffle or an inscription,
says to themselves: "Either I wear it or I resell it",
which was not at all in the mind of the client before.
Can you tell us what a raffle is?
Six or seven years ago, Yeezy and Adidas developed a registration system
to buy a pair.
It changed the sneaker world a lot.
Does it bother you, as a seller, that a third group has been added,
the resellers?
Our goal is to sell our pairs.
Whatever happens, we're going to do it. The ones who are most affected are the clients.
But, in essence, if the sneaker has exploded so much,
it is also because the resellers, by buying back all the stocks,
create demand and create desire.
Of all the SNS stores, which one works best?
Clearly, the Paris one.
And Paris is clearly the future capital of the sneaker world,
at a European level for sure, and worldwide, shortly.
For example, when there is the Fashion Week in Paris,
you don't only have the luxury brands, but all the footwear and sneaker brands
are also there.
Because the sneaker is no longer seen as the distant cousin of fashion,
it is an integral part of fashion.
And it affects everyone.
We see it every day.
We have clients, from little kids to grandmothers.
And that was a big collaboration too, apparently,
-that created a buzz? -Yes, that's a Superstar.
And especially with the Japanese brand Bape,
which is a very important brand in the street culture.
It's really a good example of a successful collaboration.
And to tell you the truth,
they displayed this pair just for the shooting, to show it to us.
We left it on the table for two seconds.
A girl came in and was like, "OMG, I can't believe this!"
And she started calling her friends.
So, that one, you keep for the archives.
Back to my little office.
It was really cool to meet all these people who talk about their love for sneakers.
So, obviously, there's the business aspect that has grown a lot in this industry,
because six, seven years ago, when Adidas and Yeezy created the raffle system,
that's when everybody could become a reseller and create a new economy.
It became Wall Street.
And for some people, a pair of sneakers is a real investment.
Obviously, later, with the influence of streetwear,
fashion started to be inspired by it and entered the sneaker world,
whether it is at the feet of fashionistas for the shows,
but also all the fashion houses, which now have their own pair of sneakers:
Dior, Prada, Valentino, it is everywhere and it has become very common.
And above all, the thing I will remember when I go to bed tonight
is that all the people we met
seemed to be so inspired and invested in their pairs of sneakers.
Beyond the aesthetics, there was a whole story.
It's the story of collabs, of universes coming together.
It's the story of how you managed to cop your pair.
I don't know if you noticed, but they all had a little story
about each of their pairs, so it's kind of the legacy.
It's also linked to culture, to music, to artists.
In short, it's something much more sentimental
than just the aesthetics of the pair of sneakers itself.
And it's all these elements
that made it go from a sports equipment to an art piece.
That was my conclusion.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Vlogue.
See you next month for a new episode,
but before then, subscribe, like this video and make sure I get my cover for Vogue.