Sneaker Freaker touched down in a hot and steamy Hong Kong last week for the launch of the Hypebeast x PUMA ‘Dim Sum Project’. In between laying tracks through Mong Kok’s maze of sneaker stores and getting our Asian kar...
Sneaker Freaker touched down in a hot and steamy Hong Kong last week for the launch of the Hypebeast x PUMA ‘Dim Sum Project’. In between laying tracks through Mong Kok’s maze of sneaker stores and getting our Asian karaoke virginity broken, SF also sat down with PUMA footwear designer Jon Tang and Hypebeast managing editor Eugene Kan to learn how the new colab came together. SF: I know you're Canadian born and bred, Eugene, so why'd you move to Hong Kong? Is the dim sum really that good here?Eugene: I came here to play soccer, a shitty level of professional soccer! I had so much free time because you only train two to three hours a day, and you're not really balling like you're playing in the EPL. I started writing for Kix-Files in 2006, I was just doing something I really enjoyed and it paid off. I still think about it now with the people that come through Hypebeast, the people that genuinely do it because they love it. The unpaid intern that you beat around, you understand that the pure passion takes you a long way. That’s how it started for me too. SF: Coming from a soccer background, how did your love for sneakers evolve?Eugene: Performance in footwear. I thought that relationship was so cool, how performance could be enhanced by equipment. I always gravitated towards things like visible air.SF: How did it differ for you Jon, coming from a design-based background?Jon: I started out in graphic design. School taught me how to think like a designer. I started working for PUMA in the marketing department as a graphic designer, so I was always surrounded by influences. I love doing packaging design and slowly seeing the 2D world wrap into a 3D world – seeing the translation that was created. I love shoes, I love 3D, and so I applied for a footwear design position with PUMA.SF: PUMA has such a strong stable of classics from Clydes to Suedes, how did you make the decision to work with the Blaze OG for this collaboration?Eugene: For me, Clydes and Suedes are limited in what you can manipulate on them. From a design perspective, the Blaze offered so much more to work with.Jon: PUMA wanted us to work with the Blaze. They loved the heritage the shoe already had and we also wanted to work with the LTWT version. It all just came together perfectly, taking classic and pushing it with the idea of performance. The OG is classic and simple, while the Lightweight has this touch of tech and innovation.Eugene: People are slowly starting to understand that paradigm shift from bulky tooling. It's the unspoken contrast, the high and low concept Hypebeast has often aspired to represent. Streetwear meets high fashion! When you look for contrast in unassuming ways, you will always find something interesting.SF: Comfy. Visually representing a dim sum on a shoe couldn’t have been easy. While the Siu Mai is rather straight forward, the Har Gao’s (shrimp) design is quite complex. Talk us through the process.Jon: We did a number of trials, applying images of shrimp on the shoe. It didn’t really work out at first.Eugene: The early samples looked pretty wack!Jon: Yeah. We began to look at macro images of shrimp, basically looking into what makes the shrimp a shrimp. We found a lot of correlation to tiger stripes in the shrimp. So we said let’s take this idea and re-purpose it with shrimp colours – it’s a refreshed shrimp camo.SF: With over 150 types of dim sum, what was it about these two that stood out for you to be the representation for the colab.Eugene: When it comes to the institution of dim sum, there are no other dishes that are ordered in unison so frequently. It's because they are so similar. If you look at it broken down, the base ingredient is different, but it's your peas and carrots.Jon: If you don’t eat it, it’s like you don’t eat dim sum! It just made perfect sense, it had to come together like this.SF: Word, bir