Son Of CHI- This is the newest Derrick Rose shoe, I’m excited to share more color ways soon, but it just launched. Based on the idea of “Godspeed”, his newest tattoo, it’s about creating a feeling of lightness, using layering against a black lining to create depth. Material selection was paramount here. Monomesh in the heel counter that reveals a 3-stripe underlay, transparency in the entire mid-foot, revealing the lightweight structure of the shoe, and an opalescent rubber outsole to add to the etherial nature of the story.
D Rose 11- This was a great example of how complex achieving simplicity can be. A beautifully designed lightweight performance shoe, the devil was in the details of the mono mesh upper, molded collar, and leno-weave toe and heel, all demanding exacting color and material attention.
D Rose 11- This was a favorite color way of mine. It was dedicated to Derrick’s son. I developed the approach to achieve the graphic on the upper, and it turned out better than we expected. Sometimes, it comes down to happy accidents.
D Rose 11- I like this one because it was one of the first time I was asked to “retro” a color way that I had done previously in my career (see below). I took some liberties, but other than the dramatics of the photographs, we achieved the goal and the color way was well received. The retro version (D Rose 4) was also re-released at the same time.
D Rose 11- This “Phoenix rising from the ashes” article, was an ask directly from an account in China, when Rose’s career was experiencing a resurgence. The upper and midsole fade turned out well, and I got to do the wing graphics on the outsole that say “Always Rise”.
D Rose 4.5- This was always one of my favorite shoes. Due to injury, Rose never played in them, but they were designed beautifully by Kohei Katana. Just by turning up and down the forefoot overlays, dynamically differently looking color ways could be created.
D Rose 4- This shoe was fairly iconic at the time- it has just been re-released this year and will continue to roll out as a retro model moving forward. I worked on most of these color ways back in the day.
D Rose 3.5- Another Kohei classic, the overlays were based on the natural geometry of Phi. Getting colors to calmly support complexity is a balancing act that I feel turned out really well on this article. On top of which, giving Rose a blue shoe back in those days was somewhat controversial, because he couldn’t play in it. It was well received and worn at the All Star Game by a number of players.
D Rose 3.5- This was a fun one. Jeremy Scott meets Derrick Rose. Not much more to it than that, I had to re-materialize the upper, and the Cherub graphic took quite a bit of photoshop work, but it was a fun shoe.
D Rose 3- Another fun one from early on. We all took D Rose very seriously back then, so when the opportunity arose to have a little fun playing off Derrick’s love of Will Smith, we ran with it. I got to do the graphics on this one too.