Say no to Roshes

For the sake of fashion enthusiasts everywhere, stop promoting Nike Roshe Runs. It’s not that Nike made them out of animal skin or something like that, they’ve just become the epitome of tasteless shoewear. Roshe runs were first introduced around 2012, and immediately exploded onto the market. Roshes followed after another major success with Nike’s free run collection which also had garnered a lot of attention from the public eye. However, developed by Dylan Raasch, these Roshe shoes were on a whole other level when they were first introduced. These shoes were filed as a “running shoe” but they were used less for running, and more for aesthetic purposes. Praised for it’s simplistic design, it included a basic flat white sole without the weird flexibility ability from Free Runs, with a mesh mid and mesh upper body, the shoe seemed to only have 3 distinct features to create the entire thing, a plain sole, a plain mesh body, and a Nike logo that donned the side of the shoe.

And when I say they exploded onto the scene, I mean they were the only shoe sneaker heads and regular citizens would talk about. They were the shoe to have. With their gaining popularity, more and more variations of the shoe came out, customized colors and unique designs,  all the while maintaining the shoe’s simplistic style. This is where it all soon went downhill. While the mass public might still be sucked in to the Roshe craze, the fashion community has been sustaining quite the headache from the constant barrage of social media posts featuring the shoes. Roshes overall have become watered down, and that’s what happens to everything that becomes popular, the item becomes overused and soon obsolete. I myself own a pair a Roshes, however I feel a little better knowing I might be the only one in the Midwest owning a pair of woven Roshes, where the shoe isn’t even recognizable as a member of the Roshe collection except for its unmistakable plain while sole. We can also thank Dylan Raasch for designing a shoe that was a gateway into the movement towards more basic shoe designs which we see visible today in shoes such as Yeezy Boosts and regular Adidas Boosts.

In conclusion, Roshes have made a serious impact on the way we value our shoe style, and we give the shoe lots of thank yous, but it’s time for the general public to gain a new sense of originality and be brave enough to shift away from the Roshe runs and find their own taste in shoe fashion.

What Is Art?

Earlier this week, we had a speaker come in, who was actually a professional cellist, to talk to us. Walking into the talk I had absolutely no idea what she was going to talk to us about, all I knew was that she was going to play some music. When she started the talk, she introduced herself and talked about what she did and what she was going to play, and right before she did, she asked us to think about one question while she played a song, and that question was “What is art?”. Wow. Kind of deep. Quite frankly I didn’t even know how to answer that even after she finished her song, but after contemplating it for a couple of days, my answer to “What is art?” is this: Art is something that can be done for the enjoyment of others, but is something that has become a true passion for the user, and art can be pretty much anything, painting, creating music with an instrument, a voice, or electronically, dancing, architecture, fashion, and even one’s body can be one’s artistic passion. Art has made it’s effect nearly everywhere in society and can be completely overlooked, shoes are designed with an artistic and tasteful value, same goes for watches, even the design of your smartphone was created by someone or a group of people who had a passion for creating what the phone of the future should look like.

Now art is a lot of things, but then there are things that shouldn’t be considered art, and it isn’t necessarily specific things or hobbies that aren’t considered artistic, it’s just the way that they are done in or the reasons they are done. For example, if one were to make music, that they enjoyed creating themselves and did it with heart and with their own flavor, and they shared that music to a crowd and profited from that music, that would still be considered art. However it no longer becomes art when the value in producing the music becomes lost by the value of the profit margins made during the production of the work, whether it be during a concert or selling CDs. It doesn’t only apply to music either, the artistic value can be lost in almost anything, when that passion no longer becomes a passion and that “passion” is no longer done to benefit the doer emotionally.

We Aren’t Special Snowflakes

In one of my previous blog posts I talked about what our generation believes is success, and the reason we believe you aren’t successful unless you like a lifestyle like no other is actually much deeper than an increased social media presence by extravagant personalities. It actually starts with going back a few generations, for my generation, we’re going back to our great-grandparents, who lived through the Great Depression, a time where if you had a job, no matter the pay, you were quite successful in the eyes of many, and as that generation grew older and had children, they wanted something more for their children, so they pushed their kids to get a job that they could eventually build into a career, whether they liked that career or not, and that would be our grandparents today. Our grandparents raised our parents and they wanted to give our parents something special, so, they granted them with entertainment, with actually giving them a toy or two to enjoy as a child, something they never had when they were children, they might have also started saving money to send their children to college, something they never were able to do, so that their kids could get a better job, whether they liked it or not, and live a better life than them. Now we get to our parents, and to give us something they never had, they SHOWER us in toys, giving us new toys all the time, they let us play in little league sports, and we have birthday parties where we bring all of our friends to some place like Chuck E Cheese. Our parents also gave us one other thing, they gave us this sense of uniqueness, they preached to us they we were special and we could grow up to be anything we want to be, since generations before us didn’t have that option of loving what they did.

Unfortunately, this sense of uniqueness is quite unrealistic, and will lead to nothing but disappointment in the future. Why? Because when an entire generation is told they are special and are entitled to something, it is going to get really awkward when they realize they aren’t entitled to anything when they enter the workforce. It is going to get really awkward when they end up working for someone else so that they can help their boss achieve their goals, and who would actually love that?

But why the 9 to 5?

For years and years the standard of working has been dignified by the “nine to five”, nearly a hundred years ago, this may have looked a little more like the “seven to seven”, so, on a good note, we have come a long ways. But have we come far enough? We were a society built on industrialization, we have dominated the globe with our economic power, with our sheer numbers in the workforce, outproducing, and overpowering. For decades the United States was the pinnacle of the globe, but our grasp of economic power has been slipping and it has been quite noticeable for quite some time now. China dominates the manufacturing game now, with a workforce nearly double our population, and India pumping out more college graduates with engineering degrees than the United States, we need to shift our gears to something different. For years now our economy has shifted towards a service economy, which is concentrated in sectors such as public health or hospitals, or financial services such as banking or investment management, or professional services such as accounting or legal services, even entertainment services makes up our general economy. Soon enough however this economy will be picked up and watered down by other countries and we will have to move on to something new.

As a part of the new generation I thoroughly believe the nine to five can become obsolete, I believe it will not be necessary in the future because I think jobs will be focused more on innovating and inventing new technologies, more project based, which will definitely remove the whole aspect of doing repetitive and simple tasks from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon, and work will have more of a meaning and will overall be enjoyable. As an even farther look into the future, I was reading an article about how Artificial Intelligence is affecting the job market and how it will affect it in the future, in the end, the author gave me one final thought; jobs are for machines, and humans are for life. This just means that we can get to the point where the entire job market can be taken over by robots and computers and instead of causing a negative impact on our society, we can use  this to our benefit, and we can get rid of the entire nine to five notion entirely, where time no longer has to be something we keep constant track of and we can enjoy life and the gifts it gives us. Hopefully it’ll come soon enough because we have every tool necessary to make this a reality for us.

On The Thought of “Success”

Success in our society has been driven extremely out of proportion lately largely due to social media and it’s tentative grasp on the newer generation. All we see on Instagram and twitter are pictures of multi million dollar houses with an oceanfront view, or a massive log cabin overlooking a pristine valley, pictures of hyper cars, Lamborghini’s, Bugatti’s, Porsche’s, as if they were everyday occurrences. On Twitter, we see twenty year old’s travelling the world, eating fancy food and staying in five star hotels. After being surrounded by this day after day, we have felt like this is the lifestyle we will be living someday, and so we ask these twenty year old entrepreneurs how they got their money, and all we receive are watered down replies. Then we have people trying to start their own business exclusively through twitter as if twitter is a gateway to this successful lifestyle, these people we call “Twitterpreneurs” and these Twitterpreneurs add to the stigma that our generation believes, in: It’s easy to become successful. When in reality, it is much different. Success today is brought about through going to college, earning a job, and growing that job into a career that can earn you a healthy income, this healthy income will be able to buy yourself a house, a decent house, a working car, support a family, pay for bills and other expenses, and will also cover whatever costs you face for entertainment in your free time.

This vision of success however isn’t enough for this generation. Everyone wants everything. They want these extremely big houses with four bedrooms, a massive yard for the kids and the dog, they want a pool or a hot tub, or something extravagant that sets themselves apart from the status quo of the average family. They also want super nice cars and want to be able to travel the world as if it’s some weekend hobby. They want to dress up in one of a kind dresses and suits and wear designer brand shoes. This is what people believe to be the only thing that will make their adult life enjoyable. Unfortunately the people we see on twitter and on instagram are the ones who got extremely lucky in their business ventures, and that’s why they’re known as the ‘one percent’, and when people continue to grow older and become frustrated that no matter how much they work, their funds get nowhere to a multi seven figure salary and at that point they’ll have a large pill to swallow.

The Destruction of Resellers

Men’s style has been a exponentially growing culture that’s captivating social media and the streets. Like every story, there is an unfortunate offspring from a string of events. This unfortunate offspring in the world of men’s fashion is the resale industry. The resale industry works like this; A fashion company will drop a new collection of clothes either in-store or online, highly sought after brands such as Raf Simons, Saint Laurent Paris, Palace, and Rick Owens could be sold out in minutes. Leaving only the select few with an extremely valuable piece of clothing, and the mass majority out of luck, feeling incomplete. However the ones that were able to get a hands on this clothing sometimes won’t even bother wearing it, instead, they will turn right around and sell it again for much more than they bought it, and because these pieces of clothing come from iconic brands, people want them, and will cave to a reseller’s price, giving these resellers a handsome profit. Sometimes the only place you’ll ever see a item of clothing is on resale apps such as Grailed. This resale industry unfortunately does not end at just clothing items.

Last year, Kanye West designed a shoe for Adidas called the YEEZY Boosy, and it originally sold for $350, those shoes sold out and could be found on Ebay being sold for $1000. Wait, people are willing to spend a thousand dollars on a pair of shoes? Yes. That’s because Kanye’s Yeezys are the pinnacle of men’s footwear. They scream money and money is cool. People would kill to get a hands on them. Resellers even go the extra mile charging extra to include the box the shoes came in and the receipt they received. The master of this reselling shoe trade is 16 year old “Benjamin Kickz”, or often known as, “The Sneaker Don”. Benjamin has contacts around the country who will sell him unreleased shoes by the crate, Ben then turns around and can sell these shoes for a 30-40% profit. Ben himself has an inventory worth over a million dollars, did I also mention that he’s only 16 years old, and hangs out with the legend DJ Khaled? As impressive and cool as this is, deep down this resale industry is destroying the fashion game, without an end in visible sight. In the meantime, I’ll continue to wear my Chuck Taylors.