The Top (Music Video) from Francis and the Lights on Vimeo.

A good discovery…

http://francisandthelights.muxtape.com/

http://francisandthelights.com/

About sneakers… i was in Tokyo  last 3 weeks and even if its not anymore like it was some years ago about sneakers… i did a nice visit, a crazy shop a bit outside of Tokyo, its called SKIT its at Kichijoji, thousands of shoes second hands, vintage, consignment shop, its like the archive of Nikes, you can find everything in every states, from mint to trash… the guys are nice and they got a website, i dont know if its in english but here is the link:

http://www.k-skit.com/

The last day of my Japan trip i had the chance to meet interesting people.
my first meeting of the day was with Fraser Cooke. we had quiet a long chat on the roof of his office, a really nice place. He explained me his work and the special position he got at Nike, we talked about how the all industry is moving and changing, about music as he was first a DJ and obviously about graphic design…

for the dinner i met Keisuke / Kevin.
He is working for EMI Japan, he handle all the projects connected with the Daft Punks, and more generaly the all french touch and the Beastie Boys, Cold Play etc…
We ate at the Soma bar a good place to eat, drink and listen to good music. it was also a really interesting discussion, we talked about the music industry, the japanaese mentality and also sneakers… he is a real sneakers head so we had things to talk about!
thanks to both of you

Time is flying too fast…

Everybody saw the pair already… but i want to give a little bit more details about these kicks.
When we have been asked by Nike to design a bespoke for Sneakerness, Grotesk and I came straight away with the idea to refer to master pieces, he came with the AJ3 ref and i brought the AJ Sky High.

Kimou overseas in NYC Mercer street with IZ the Tailor and myself in front of my screen through ichat video conf (thanks to Apple…) we prepared this before, so we did it quiet fast, we knew what we wanted!

So when you look at this AF1 Bespoke Sneakerness, you can see the color code of the Sky High, mainly white, the heel gray and the top of the heel red orange (infrared), so we tried to stick at the max to our references, we wanted to use white canvas (ecru, unbleached) but its not available with the bspoke porgr. so the material on the shoe is a white 3M reflective material (ecru,bone color) which is pretty cool because reflective is also linked to AJs, then we wanted the mid sole to be old white rubber, not available too, so we kept it white. For the sole, if we wanted to stick to our ref, it should have been gray but the only gray available was way too drak, so to keep as close as possible to our bases we took the transparent one, because we thought it will be the closer thing to gray, so we used this transp sole and it was also cool to had a little touch of fancyness in this creation, plus transparent is also strongly referencial to AJs (5)
Then you got the elephant skin, dont need to explain about that… the gray swoosh is 3M reflective (we stick to the Sky High’s color code) the heel logo part is 3M infrared reflective, the gray strip under it is 3M refl. too, the lining is white leather and the footbed is infrared (usually the footbed as to be in the same color than the lining…). the 2 pivots under the sole are white and the label on the tongue is also a nice detail, we had the chance to ba able to embroide the Nike Air logo in 2 colors, thats a detail but it was cool to make it the same way than the Sky High’s Label…
and for the end, the laces rings: Grotesk wanted to use the cross stitching to make 3 stitches on the top-side of the mudguard and the end of the rings line, to make the ref to the 3 red rings of the AJ3 (impossible to make 3 stitches where you want, you have to follow the all shape of a part…) and i wanted the Laces rings to be silver metal, like on the Sky High so we mixed the 2 ideas to make the 3 last rings in red, at the end its my favourite detail on the shoes, it works perfectly and it has never been done before…
if you look to all the bespokes already done, you will see the metal rings only on canvas shoes and never in 2 colors…
So you got all the details now! ho yeah there is extra laces, infrared ones

Thanks a lot to Nike to Dave Marshal, to IZ at Mercer street and of course to Kimou!! it was a pleasure to collaborate and it was a pleasure to make this international swiss collab for a great swiss event, Sneakerness!
…usualy i dont like AF1s but these ones im loving them!