What drew you to the Air Zoom Flight 95 as opposed to something like Penny Hardaway’s Nike Air Max Penny 1, Shawn Kemp’s Reebok Kamikaze II or even Grant Hill’s FILAs? You’d mentioned that there were a lot of dope basketball shoes coming out in the mid ‘90s. We’d always get those catalogues at the house, and I’d pick out what I liked then try to get it at Foot Locker, Athlete’s Foot, Copeland’s, whatever. The first time I saw the Air Zoom Flight 95 was definitely in an Eastbay catalog. Besides that, I feel like signature basketball shoes were a bigger cause for excitement back then then they are today. Did it have anything to do with Jason Kidd’s popularity in the Bay Area? So when did the Air Zoom Flight 95 enter the picture for you? That’s definitely not a skate shoe. We originally bonded over our shared love of shoes and skateboarding. Shoes and skateboarding were really the basis of a lot of my interests. The basketball aspect of the Air Jordan 1 didn’t even come into prominence for me until later, when I got deeper into hoops, hip-hop, Michael Jordan. So as a young kid, I’m identifying with the skaters. I remember being really stoked because it was the shoe all the skateboarders in San Francisco wore. My mom got ‘em for me because they were on clearance. I mean sh*t, the first specific shoe I recall getting was an OG Air Jordan 1 in the ‘80s. When you’re a kid, collecting anything - baseball cards, basketball cards, comics, whatever - is super fun, and I just gravitated towards collecting shoes. That instilled in me at a young age an important lesson: the identity that you portray to the world can come in the form of the shoes you wear. Same for Above the Rim, New Jersey Drive, the scene in Juice where Omar Epps keeps changing his shoes. If I was watching White Men Can’t Jump, I was looking at Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes’ shoes. Hanni El Khatib: When you’re a kid, you’re heavily influenced by what’s directly in front of you. Khatib’s life is one of several stories, and they’re all brought together by sneakers in the latest installment of HYPEBEAST‘s Sole Mates series - as he discusses his early days of sneaker fandom, how his perspective on sneakers changed while he working at HUF and if he thinks musicians are the new athletes when it comes to moving signature product. 10, 15 years ago, you wouldn’t see a lot of rockers talking about Air Jordans and Air Force 1s, much less a shoe like the Air Zoom Flight 95.” “I’ve talked to journalists who’ve been in streetwear for 20 years, and people would bring up these concurrent touchpoints in my career - but it’s really cool to fuse these things together fully. “HYPEBEAST has covered some of my work at HUF and my music career as well, but they’ve never really crossed over like this,” Khatib mused before our interview. Even later in life as the creative director of HUF, Khatib had the privilege of working with the late, great Keith Hufnagel on several legendary collaborations with Nike, adidas, Vans and more. As he grew older and learned more about skateboarding, hip-hop and basketball he gravitated towards Nike‘s Air Zoom Flight 95, a bug-eyed basketball shoe commonly associated with Jason Kidd and centered around the carbon fiber ovals on its midsole. Sneakers have been a driving force in Khatib’s life since he was a kid, skateboarding across the Bay Area in Air Jordan 1s.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |