INTERVIEW: CHRIS KYVETOS OF ATHLETICS
“I remember being asked if sneakers would be a permanent trend,” Chris Kyvetos recalls. He then smirks, “sneakers aren't a trend, you know.” Indeed, just like jewellery or outerwear, it’s an industry of its own. And if anything, the men behind Athletics Footwear helped break the ice between high fashion and sneaker circles.
Athletics is made up of a winning trio. Chris with his shop Sneakerboy, a fashion destination whose name is pretty self-explanatory, Myles O’Meally who’s had many design hits at Nike, Off-White, and, who’s also recently founded an agency called Areté and was commissioned to develop Raf Simons’ inaugural footwear line. And as for Neil Beeson: he worked on the first ever collaborative work between a fashion house and a sports giant. “I thought I had my fair share of experience, and then I met Neil,” says Chris.
In 1998 Jil Sander collaborated with Puma to make sneakers that merged lifestyle with performance elements. The King and the Easy Rider — meant for footballers and runners — made their way off the pitch and into the streets. At the time this was a first of its kind, and Neil was on board.
Each in their own way, Chris, Myles and Neil contributed to make fashion sneakers less of a jarring concept, and Athletics Footwear is the fruit of their labours: a shoe that’s tech enough to sweat in, and fresh enough so that it can be sported everyday.
TNO caught up with Chris to hear more about Athletics Footwear and their two pairs of trainers, the ONE and the ONE.2 /
TNO: How did you come up with the name Athletics Footwear?
Chris Kyvetos: I’ve always kept mood boards and collections of close-up detail shots of cars, outdoor scenes, iconic designs, people, places and such things. As much as the references may differ from another, they do share certain lifestyle tendencies. At a certain point I remember looking at those pictures and I could only think of one thing: Athletics, so we just went with it. And a little like with Sneakerboy, I’ve always quite fancied simple names.
What has informed the shoes’ design? Is there an era in which the sneaker game inspired you?
We took late 90s early 00s nostalgic references to purposeful shoe design. When you look back at that era, you see that there is reasoning behind the sneakers and no fuss about them. It’s a time where shoes were designed for their footwear functions, not so much for their marketing functions and surely not for their prospects of breaking the internet. A lot of shoes would go unmarketed actually. So the functionality of the shoe would usually be the main selling point.
From that time, is there any shoe or something else entirely that’s a design success to your eyes?
If I had to pinpoint a sneaker, I’d go for the New Balance 2001. There is just a sense of simplicity and purity to it. Then besides sneakers, there’d be the Porsche 911 series, and the way it has evolved over the years. The initial design does change through time, but only slightly. Of course they’ve adapted the car’s features to new technologies. Its core, though, remained pretty much intact. And actually the same applies to the New Balance’s as well.
Is it a design approach that we can expect to see from Athletics Footwear?
Definitely, yes — Athletics is no different. The shoes’ classic, timeless silhouettes sit in that sweet spot between nostalgia and innovation. The first one that we released, the ONE, is created out of very basic materials, it doesn’t have much detailing, it’s got a simple shape and clean lines. Then, with the ONE.2, we’ve tuned it up in terms of performance and, stylistically speaking, there’s been a few add-ons. And as technology in footwear evolves, the shape of the next ones will inevitably change. Yet when put side by side, you’ll be able to see that one shoe comes from the other.
From talking about it to actually releasing it, how much work went into the brand’s first pair of shoes, the ONE?
It’s been, I’m not afraid to say, a very difficult process to design a shoe from scratch, one that is up to our standards. It took us a good three years to get to something that we really like, that we could put out. We’re not a high-performance brand by any stretch. And even though Myles has worked with Nike, and Neil with Puma, it’s a different thing to have to do it yourself. If you think of how many brands there are in fashion compared to how many there are in the sneaker game, the difference in numbers is striking. That’s because shoemaking involves so much. So yeah, setting everything up took us at least three years.
There must have been quite a few attempts to get to a design that satisfied you…
There have been many prototypes, yes. It’s to the point where we were looking through all the sketches and mockups we’ve done and recently thought we should make a shoe out of these. It’ll be called the ZERO, as it actually is the unreleased forerunner of what kickstarted Athletics. There’s been a lot of testing to get to the ONE, and not all of it was bad. That doesn’t have to go to waste.
And so the released models will remain available as the brand grows, right? Is this a reaction to the hype-driven sneaker industry that constantly seeks what’s new and what’s next?
They will, yes, but also we’ll revisit them at some point. As we learn more and more, we’ll make some tweaks performance-wise. As for the hype factor of the sneaker world, I mean, we don’t have much control over that. Like I remember when everyone was gassed about having a pair of Common Projects, and it’s a pretty simple shoe. Now with Athletics we certainly don’t aim to engineer hype, but then again it’s also something we can’t control… The one thing I’m not so fond of is the huge amount of reselling that’s going on. That’s too much, I think. But other than that it’s led to positive things as well, and kind of drives the industry.
What’s driving the release calendar, then? And what can we expect to see from Athletics in the future aesthetically and technically?
In the near future we’re looking to release a shoe a year. The TWO in 2022, then the next year the THREE. Now I can’t say much in detail, but there will be loads of performance upgrades. What’s coming up could hit the trails. Of course it won’t be marketed that way, it remains a shoe rooted in a city-dwelling lifestyle. But one that you could put on your feet and go for a run. And whether it’s on the road or on trails, it works.