Nous vous l’avions annoncé il y a quelques temps, la boutique d’Amsterdam Ben G vient de réaliser une Blazer SB. Cette dernière sera disponible à partir de ce week-end chez Ben G et le 15 novembre un peu partout ailleurs. Selon la boutique une centaine de paires sera attribuée au marché européen. Retrouvez dans la suite de nouvelles images de cette Blazer ainsi qu’une interview du shop.
HS: Hi Benny, hope all is good. So, you have worked again with Nike SB on a nice project. How did the process start?BG: Well since i started the store and had an account with SB I’ve been bugging them to do a Ben G shoe. So i guess they got fat up with me at some point and thought my 5 year anniversary what the right time to do something.
From the looks of things the Blazer is inspired by a popular candy egg. Brand names aside, care to talk about why you decided on this color palette/theme?
Always been a fan of this product and i think everyone used to love it when they we’re young. The whole concept was perfect for a shoe referring the white pebbled leather tot the wrapping of the egg etc.
Also the fact that this concept was a good excuse to make a white and black Blazer since the suede black and white blazer is one of my all time favorite SB shoe’s to skate in….thank god it’s a carry over model!
Can you give us some information on the design process of the sneaker?
It wasn’t that hard to do the shoe when we had the concept. The first sample had a orange midsole which was even more perfect for the concept and it looked cool only it wasn’t something i would have worn myself…so they asked me what i really wanted. I wanted a simple shoe so we choose to keep the mid sole white and the sole orange.
We’ve heard this wasn’t the first time you’ve worked on a sneaker with Nike SB.
Actually the shoe that was named the “Huxtable” Dunk was supposed to be a Ben G shoe. We pitched the shoe as a “Coogi” dunk referring to the sweater Biggie was wearing in that covershot of the Source where he is counting his money. We tried to make the print exactly like that sweater but when the first sample came back it didn’t look like the sweater print at all. And the shoe was dope but it wasn’t something i would wear personally so we decided to not make this a Ben G shoe and do something else which was this shoe. The Nike people still wanted to bring out the shoe which was fine by me!
Back to the Blazer. When and where will it be coming out? How many units?
Nike generally doesn’t want me to talk about numbers but to give you a sense we just did a couple of hundred for Europe and I know some selected stores in the US will get the shoe as well.
We will be the first to sell it on Saturday 30th and the rest of the globe will follow the 15th. Also we’re having a release/ Ben G 5 year party on the 29th the day before the release.
By the way, how is the skate scene in Amsterdam these days?
Although the scene is a bit splintered there are a lot of new young kids that started skating so i have great hopes!
