Can you tell us about all the things that make your Nike SB Dunk Lo Pro special?
I love this quote: “Good things happen over time, but great things happen all at once,” because I feel like this whole design came to me. I just knew exactly what I wanted to do—and this was before they even told me they were going to give me a shoe. They said they wanted to have a meeting with me in Oregon, and I was like, okay, this is my time, it’s happening, so I wanted to have something ready.
I’ve always thought about designing a shoe, and I knew I wanted to do a plain white leather shoe with a blue swoosh; it’s my favorite [color] combination. I was wearing belt chains a lot while skating, and I was like, “I’ve never seen a chain on a shoe. I wonder if we could do that?” So I came up with the chain idea, mimicking a double-chain bracelet I was wearing at the time. And then I was like, “I think plaid is going to hit; I think that’s next.” So I decided to do a plaid blue swoosh, and I was very specific about the material; I wanted it to feel kind of like clothing that could rip and fray if you skated it. And I didn’t want the swoosh to be attached, I wanted a free floating swoosh that doesn’t attach to the back of the heel.
When I was designing it, there were a couple times that I was nervous, [thinking] “Is this too much? Is it too flashy? Is it not skateboarding enough?” I’m stoked about the shoe, and there was a lot of serendipity around it. I designed it in January or February 2023, and this year I feel like Billie Eilish posted plaid a lot, and then her album came out and it was all blue.
You can remove the chains. I can put the chain around my wrist and use it as a bracelet, which is really cool, but I think it depends on how big your shoe size is and how big your wrist is. The medallion says Victory of the People because that’s what my name means in Greek. I’m a bird watcher and there’s a hummingbird on the insole. I love flying on my skateboard, so I kind of associate with birds in that way. Hummingbirds are just really special; they’re the smallest bird, but they’re really tough, they can travel really far, and they are the only birds that can fly in all directions. I think it is really cool that they can fly backwards because one of the things I like to do on my skateboard is go into the air forward, but land backwards.
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