Botter's Genius Reebok Line Is For the Youth (EXCLUSIVE)
It all started with Botter's graduate collection in 2017. Founders Rushemy Botter and Lisi Herrebrugh couldn't find the right shoes to complete their vivid post-tailoring menswear looks, so they made their own.
"We love surprises," Botter and Herrebrugh tell me over the phone while driving through Amsterdam, speaking so enthusiastically that their sentences overlap organically, ideas bleeding into a cohesive whole. Pushing the footwear envelope "came super organically but it also came from a need."
Botter needed giant shoes. And thus it squashed sportswear trainers into menswear soles, devising delightfully freakish double-stacked creations neither sneaker nor shoe.
"We had this whole narrative of the young generation stepping atop the old generation," the Botter designers explain enthusiastically, which is, really, the entire foundation of their brand.
Puckishly anti-corporate and pro-youth, Botter's design language is shaped by inspiration obtained from fashion archives, from libraries, from the Caribbean — Botter was born in Curaçao, Herrebrugh in the Dominican Republic — but, mostly, from the kids.
"The youth is the power. youth is the future," they say. "Youth is fearless, bold. It's inspirational. They push and show off what they can with what they have. It's beautiful to see."
This bottom-upward ethos is perpetually ingrained within Botter's process, visible in its gleefully anything-goes approach to styling and signature super-wide polo shirts. It also carries over naturally to Botter's collaboration with Reebok LTD, Reebok's high-end line.
Within the span of only a few years, Botter and Reebok LTD have created brilliant shoes, including warped, 3D-printed sneakers that look H.R. Giger but are actually inspired by shells.
Most recently, the pair released slick low-profile shoes that reframe football boots into contemporary streetstyle fare — flashy, fun and, frankly, exceptionally wearable. So wearable, in fact, that the sneaker almost instantly sold out online. The former style, created with HP's Multi Jet Fusion 3D printer, has yet to release.
"Reebok is pure nostalgia," Botter himself says. "I was a fan of [Arsenal/Barcelona striker] Thierry Henry, who wore Reebok boots, but you also see a lot of Reebok in the Caribbean. It's a sort of luxury, passed down generation to generation and worn with pride."
Botter and Herrebrugh are keen to reiterate that their football fixation isn't merely a passing fad or the entirety of their brand. Really, football functionas as a stylistic touchpoint within the Botterverse.
"Our connection to football is more emotional than [tangible]," they explain.
"It's a feeling. We look into how coaches and players dress, how they lace their boots and wear their socks. it's uniform but if you look at it, really look at it, you can see [personality]."
Reebok LTD helps further elicit Botter's sportswear cues but it also ground the wildness of Botter's footwear innovations, translating the expressive shapes of Botter's in-house footwear into wearable sneakers.
"Our original shoe designs are experimentation, like artwork, and we couldn't guarantee that you can wear them," the designers say. "[Reebok LTD] helped us translate those ideas into shoes that you can actually wear.
"We really feel the passion and mutual love and there's still so much we're working on. We have beautiful plans."
