In the world of design, we as consumers flock to products that are impeccably designed.  We desire the aesthetically fly, and can tell when there is a certain attention to detail that sets a product apart from all the other mediocrity. Sometimes these designers, the "authors of cool" are left off the information pages... Well not today! World say hello to C-Law.... Chris Law is a lead Designer for Adidas Coastal, Adidas Skateboarding, and ex-founding member of the world renowned sneaker website Crooked Tongues (1999-2007). 

Chris has worked with the best of the best: from Adidas,Addict, New Balance, Puma, Stüssy, Recon, New Era, Endeavor Snowboards, Wellbred, and industry personalities such as BJ Betts, Aaron Horkey, Michael Sieben, and Ian Brown.  He has been associated with Lewis Sterling, Addict, Crooked Tongues, CliqueNMove, and Bond International. Chris Law aka C-Law is not just an "author of cool," he is a gospel... Interview by Matthew Ross.

SXH:  Working with Adidas must have been a total blast.  The finish product looks amazing.  How did the process go? From picking the models?  Choosing the colors/Materials?  Production??? ETC???  Also, what were some of the failed sample ideas?  Also were did you draw inspiration?

 
C-LAW: Well, yeah it was/is good, love it. Ben (Pruess) asked me a year ago now would I like to do my own range for Adidas that would be a large scale release, not the small boutique style of releases that I’d worked on previously. Of course I was well happy about it, straight away my brain was going spaz thinking what I could do. There were however certain restrictions on what I could do, which were I had to select from a certain range of shoes, the shoes would be at a certain price point, so I couldn’t go mad on high end luxury materials, and the collection had to feature the a.d.i.d.a.s (All Day I dream About Sneakers) strapline, fair enough, let’s do this.

I started out just by doing the colourways, but really wanted to have a decent input into the materials as well, so I flew over from London to Herzo to the Gerrman HQ to work with Erman Aykurt on choosing the materials within the set FOB (…). I wanted to use classic materials that I love, suedes with mesh vamps especially (no creasy toes).
 
Some of the colourways are inspired by classic Adidas colourways like the ZX600 has the Fairway green with the lemon peel, one of the Attitudes was inspired by the SE Racing PK Ripper Camo.
 
There wasn’t any failed samples, just a couple of colourways that got changed (I have them still) and we were in the process of re-issueing the Avenger, which is a old late 80s fave shoe of mine, but that never happened unfortunately. There are a few things that I would change now If I could, and there are definitely other models I would have chosen given the chance, but over all I’m pretty happy with the results. 

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