Name: Paul Mittleman
Age: 40
Occupation: Stussy Creative Director
Where you're from: New York City
Where you're at : Los Angeles
 
 
 
 
 
 

How was the Dunk originally perceived when it was released?
 
It's interesting to think of it in terms of sampling because the greatest part of music at least early hip hop music, was the idea of the sample but if you figure the way the dunk became sampled because its even an interesting position that Nike took on that shoe, they designed the shoe but the colors where kind of sampled in a way you could argue because they were used by the college teams so the colors of the shoes were given to the shoes.   No one sat there with this board of like… I mean Michigan had to be blue and gold. Arizona had to be black and gold. Syracuse had to be orange and white. Those were kind of positive in the relationship between Nike and college basketball which I think was kind of interesting because I don't think it ever happened before.   It wasn't like a bunch of designers there with Pantones.  I think that's kind of almost like an interesting error.
 
 
How do you think its now perceived?
 
The dunk spans so many different genders, race, economics, sport, like guys wear them, girls wear them, uptown dudes wear them, skaters wear them, hip hop kids wear them.   No other shoe hits every mark. You'll see some 40 year old dude, well I'm a 40 year old dude, but some 40 year old dude will be at Starbucks and have his pair. Or then you'll get a chick that's like 19 with hers, or some Bboy kind of guy running… it's a lot of people for a style of shoe.   I mean the Air Force 1 doesn't go there, none of the running shoes go there.  I don't think anyone can find a shoe that has such a demographic.   If someone can I welcome the challenge to discuss it.

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