ABOUT
The Ghillie MTE was the first footwear design I was involved with to be manufactured and produced. The shoe conceived from physically iterating with Sk8 Hi using scrap material. I designed the shoe as an intern at Vans and it was produced the following season.
DESIGN BRIEF
The design brief for the shoe was to distill the existing Ghillie design by resident designer Taka Hayashi for a larger audience by bringing it into the main line. The Ghillie lace is inspired by traditional Irish footwear and adaptations of the ghillie system have been introduced over the decades as a fashion statement. The ghillie lace also made a fashionable return in sneaker culture as alternative lacing continued to grow in popularity.
OPPORTUNITY
I used sample Sk8 Hi and a hole-punch to test different locations for the second row of eyelets for the runner lace. Using a reductive method rather than sewing in leather eyelets increases durability and creates a unique aesthetic.
The initial design mirrored the amount of eyelets on a traditional Sk8 hi but offset to work with the lines of the shoe when it was fully laced. The final shoe was a development of this concept as I played with using both the original eyelets and a tracer lace looped through a second set of eyelets.
GALLERY
Here are a collection of photos of the final shoe, put into production in 2018 and recirculated multiple seasons in different colorups.
PRESS
The Sk8 Mid Ghillie Reissue (a whole mouthful of a name) garnered a lot of attention the following year, ti was picked up by skate accounts around the world and even written up by Mens Journal as one of the must-haves for the Fall/ Winter season.
LEGACY
It turns out that the Sk8-Mid Reissue Ghillie was popular! So much so that they gave it new colors for multiple seasons. Here are some of the colorups that have released since the original drop of Black, Beige Gum and Grey.
