This Designer Knows What Sneakers You’ll Be Wearing Next Year

livemint.com:

From an early age, Salehe Bembury could see the sneakers of the future. In childhood sketchbooks he morphed the shapes of dinosaurs and praying mantises into intricate, tubular shoes, with strap closures and cupped soles. They were like nothing the market had seen before.

Today, Bembury, 36, continues to give footwear buyers something novel with each box-breaking shoe he rolls out. In a market worth at least $70 billion and as much as $130 billion, the native New Yorker is something of a sneaker oracle—the designer responsible for some of the most inventive, forward-thinking products of the past several years. He worked at Kanye West’s Yeezy on shapely military boots that looked beamed in from a yet-to-be-made “Blade Runner" sequel.

At Versace, he brought to life the gold-necklace-inspired Chain Reaction sneaker with its colossal chain-imprinted outsole, helping to usher in the trend of chunky dad sneakers. Under his own name, he collaborated with New Balance on a sly update of its 574 model, giving it a functional whistle on the back. He’s responsible for Crocs’s wildly successful Pollex, a closed-heel clog that drew its spindly, textured design from Bembury’s own fingerprint.

So where does Bembury, the pragmatic sneaker-savant, think the footwear world will navigate next? Personalization was his immediate answer. “The future of shoes might fall into the hands of the individual," said Bembury. He cited Nike ID, the pioneering do-it-yourself program that launched in 1999 allowing shoppers to select each shade of a Dunk sneaker and stitch their initials on the back heel, as a possible template.