Brian designs shoes with Keith Haring foundation

Last weekend in Paris we were actually there for a work trip. I got to work on a cool project for Tommy designing a line of sneakers and rainboots for men, women and children. We partnered with the Keith Haring foundation to make the collection, and it was really cool to be able to work with the art of a cultural icon. Tommy made a donation to the Keith Haring foundation so that we could use the art. Its nice to work on projects like this that have a charity angle. I have been really lucky to sort of fall into that work on the job with the Doernbecher Foundation, Nike Foundation and Project Red and now this. Read more about the foundation here.

As you can see the shoes are pretty crazy. His art was really Pop (Haring is was just featured in the exhibit Pop Life at the TATE Modern) and very 80s so I thought I would try to make a retro inspired collection with the same energy that Haring's art had. Check out the pictures from the store Colette. I wanted to take the look of Haring's famous "Pop Shop" and adapt it for the store. They painted a pattern on all the walls and floors and I designed the logo and neon for the program. Very cool to see it all come to life!

See below a picture of me and Pepe, the designer I worked with from Tommy.

The store Colette also created a microsite for the shoes, its here. There you can see all of the million styles we did. (Maybe overkill in my mind).

They did a great job promoting the event and there were loads of people there. Colette promoted the launch by combining it with a gallery showing of modern graffiti artist Andre. It was a nice connection with Keith Haring and it brought out a lot of the Paris cool kids crowd. Local music sensation Sebastian Tellier was there, along with Busy P and other people I didn't recognize.

Overall it was a really cool thing to do, a great experience and a neat chance to make something that people will enjoy wearing. See more pictures on my re-designed website here.

- Brian