About a year ago Derek Adams asked if I would be down to do a custom pair of Vandever 2s for Orchid…

Of course I was down… so for the next two weeks Derek and I talked about different ideas and what was possible. I knew the purpose of the shoe was limited and so doing something very simple and functional wouldn’t be any fun. I didn’t want shoes that I would actually wear out to a fancy club or something (Get the Orchid Break Hi-Tops for that) but just something that stood out and I could one day show to my kids and be like, “yeeeeeeppppp your old man had his own shoe once” then show it to my kids and have them be like “OMFG!!!”

I wanted something similar to some over the top kids shoe at Payless or something. You know like when you were a kid and you got those LA LIGHTS that weighed 20 pounds and flashed every time you took a step. Those were badass and they stick out to me still. So the design in general is meant to be over the top and just kind of crazy. The shoe has fucking space glitter on it. Come on!! I thought riding in space glitter shoes would be really badass so that’s what I pitched to Derek…

I love when I pitch crazy ideas to Derek because he is always like “uhhh… *laugh*… I don’t know” and then I’m all like “COME ON IT WILL BE AWESOME” and then he’s usually like “Sure… I mean… we can do that”

So a year later. It was pretty wild because all I did was illustrator mockups and then a year later it is made and being sold and here I am posting the collab on Defgrip with a bunch of run on sentances.

Check this though… this is a picture of the boxart unfolded:

The bottom of the box is pretty funny… it is this collage of ASCII wizards/spaceships/dragons… I’ve been really into ASCII stuff over the past year so I couldn’t resist.  At one point I had the whole box decorated in ASCII Fairies and type that said “hottie” but that was just TOO much.

Anyway they are available now at most bmx shoe retailers. For a full list check out Orhid’s dealer list here: http://orchidfootwear.com/dealers.html

I want to thank Orchid and Derek and Van for letting me do it. Maybe I can convince them to give out a free pair here for the Defgrip peeps. More to come on that later!

Thanks for reading this long post.