They keep saying the sneaker game is dead. Real ones know it never dies — it only transforms.
SOLE STORY gathers five people who have given their lives to footwear for a conversation the industry keeps having about the culture without the people who built it. Because the real question was never whether the game is dead. It's how it lives — and who it lives for. The brands raking it in on nostalgia? The resellers who turned release day into the pit of Wall Street? The collectors vaulting colorways like stock certificates? Or the ones who care for these shoes in a way most never will — the restorers and customizers who've dedicated their lives to studying the work, no book, no syllabus.
Hosted by Takiyah "TDUB" Ward (The Re-Sole 206) inside her solo exhibition The RETROspective, SOLE STORY features:
Holiday Black (BroBroFreshtorations) — the ultimate Jordan sneakerhead. Literally only wears Jordan Brand.
Jordan Knox — style authority, author, decades in the industry including corporate years at Nordstrom.
Brandie Henry — business strategist to creative-sector small businesses, Nordstrom-trained in branding and buying, and a certified sneakerhead.
Rex Prasad — customizer since high school, where he and Ward were the only two kids in the building doing custom work for classmates.
Let's get down to the art of the matter on sneakers.
