Respect Authority

Sneakers, like any legitimate subculture, have long begun their slow descent into the sad realm of the absurd. I’m not talking LA Lights absurd, rather noting that the industry and the culture that surrounds it has fallen into the postmodern trap that all trends do as they enter their twilight, where originality falls by the way side and old concepts come back to eat themselves. It is a dark place where winning formulas are rehashed constantly and fresh ideas inspire only fear.

This is not to say that sneakers are under any threat of losing their insane popularity, but the industry has become a serious money-maker (really???), and this always involves the corporate big wigs pulling the strings at some level, which means a corporate big wig’s understanding of the subculture is introduced early on in any product’s conception and the end product reflects a corporate big wig’s values. Enter: C1RCA Select’s Holiday 2008 line.

Left: C1RCA; Right: Gourmet

The most obvious offender here is the 99 Vulc. Notice anything when it’s placed side by side with Gourmet’s Air Jordan VII Cease that released this summer? “You mean other than the fact that they resemble each other so much that if they went to the same school everybody would ask if they were brothers?”

We have an interesting coalescence of events here. Gourmet has become quite popular in recent seasons as a luxury sneaker brand, while C1RCA Select is skateboarding footwear company C1RCA’s foray into the luxury/nonskate sneaker bracket. Interestingly, one of C1RCA Select’s first models looks suspiciously similar to one of Gourmet’s more popular previous offerings. Oh wait, I meant, that’s not interesting at all because it’s totally fucking obvious.

It’s a well-worn industry strategery: If you can’t come up with a hit, try again with something that hit in the past. Shh, go with suede instead of canvas and nobody will know. We see it with music and movies, why not sneakers too?

The true depths of uninspired recycling going on here can only be fully understood upon realizing that Gourmet’s entire aesthetic is based on reworking classic Nike silhouettes with premium materials. Their summer line featured blatant appropriations of the Air Jordan VII and X. The one shred of difference that could be used to justify Gourmet’s seemingly similar lack of originality is that at least they’re upfront with it, whereas C1RCA didn’t exactly circulate a press release noting their 99 Vulc was a “reimagining of the 3-month-old, now classic Gourmet Summer ‘08 line,” because that would have been overwhelmingly retarded… as opposed to just potentially retarded.

I guess similar reasoning has also stopped them from openly publicizing the fact that their goal with the entire rest of the line was actually to copy as much of the Gravis aesthetic as possible? Hey, if you’re going to bite, might as well take a nibble of everything that’s worked in the past, chew it all up into a generic mash, and who knows, it might just taste good! On the other hand… you might just gag on it instead, which I think is what’s happening to me here.

Left: C1RCA; Right: Gravis ... "You guys sure you're not related?"

How much cash can you wring out of an idea before Payless, a poorly lit hell where all overtired sneakers go to die, starts mass-producing clones of your shoe, the proverbial rock bottom for any style? When can we look forward to such a deserved fate for this trend… circa Holiday 2008 perhaps?