Jadakiss on the New 'Floor Seats' Clarks Wallabees: 'They're Fire'
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below."
The first pair of Wallabees that Jadakiss ever wore weren’t really Wallabees at all. “My first pair was Hush Puppies,” he tells me. “My foot was too small to fit an actual Clarks Wallabee.” After seeing his uncles and cousins wearing them, he hounded his mom for his own pair. But back then, Clarks didn’t make Wallees that small. So he had to settle for the lookalike.
“I didn’t hate ‘em, but I didn’t love ‘em,” he continues. “They were similar, and I could get away with it because I was a little kid. But when I got the first pair of actual Clarks with the little tassels on them, and unwrapped the paper—I felt like I made it.”
What makes them so desirable? Jadakiss knew even then: “The gummy bottom. The toe box. Just the color, the way the color—the original wheat—goes with everything. The way pants sat on them. I had an uncle that wore them with sweatpants. It was just something where you had to have them. You needed them."
The legendary New York rapper is explaining all of this in the stockroom of influential Miami boutique UNKNWN. We’re smack in the middle of Art Basel, and Clarks is hosting a party at a makeshift-basketball-court-slash-music-venue to celebrate the release of the new, hyper-limited-edition “Floor Seats” Wallabee. The stockroom is one of the few spots where you can lower your voice tonight to something other than the full-blown shout necessary to be heard over the music and revelers just outside the door.
He’s here not just because he’s a longtime Clarks fan, but also because, just a few minutes ago, he was part of the entertainment. The rapper performed a short set for the crowd, including his new track “Floor Seats,” which was released on Soundcloud in the run-up to the party and the new Wallabee’s release. It features him, Dave East, and Compound founder Set Free Richardson, and it’s an ode to basketball, Wallabees, and the rarified front-row experience.
Jadakiss is, naturally, wearing the shoes that bear the same name as his new song: Wallabee boots with brown, beeswax leather uppers that are perforated along the toe, a nod to vintage basketballs. They were designed in collaboration with Richardson, a friend and creative partner of Jadakiss (who just so happened to provide the voiceover for a short documentary about Wallabees, “Soles of the City,” that Richardson directed).
“In the collab market, a lot of people want to go really wild and do a lot, a lot, a lot,” Richardson says. “I wanted to go simple, and clean. And the vintage basketballs—the brown—was the first bit of it, with the perforation. And then, it’s wintertime. We’re launching at Art Basel, but it’s still a New York state of mind for me, always, and the brown leather shoe is real New York. And I wanted to make sure the sole could stand the test of time and not get dirty. So it’s taking all those elements and trying to keep it minimal, but really classy. Elevated.”
There’s also a thematic element in the shoes, Richardson says. “That front row in basketball, the floor seats, is the same row at Paris Fashion Week,” he explains. So he wanted to bring those two worlds together. Throw in Art Basel, and you’ve got a powerful point of convergence. “For me, all these cultures live together, but a lot of people can’t put them together,” Richardson says. “So tying it in—art and music, art and fashion…art is everything. So there was no better stage than Art Basel to tie it all together.”
There are only 200 pairs of the limited Wallabees available, and you can only get them at UNKNWN. “The people that do get them, I want them to feel that feeling of: No matter where you are, you’re at the level of that floor seat experience,” Richardson says. “For the people that can’t get ‘em: Don’t worry, some more great things are coming down the line.”
Jadakiss, of course, already has his pair. So, are they going in the rotation? “Definitely,” he says. “They’re lightweight, they feel good, they go with everything. They’re fire. I love ‘em. I can’t wait to go to a few parties tonight and see how my feet feel.”
You Might Also Like
