A passion of mine growing up and a big driver of my aesthetic was soccer/football. And after the recent article in The Business of Fashion this week that spoke of luxury brands cashing in on it, I thought once again we are on the pulse of what is happening. I grew up playing Rugby League in Australia but would follow what the European football players were wearing footwear-wise on the pitch. I would spend my free time down at the local sporting goods store checking out the latest boots and, although we didn’t have a lot of money to splash around, still managed to get a few pairs of boots a season. I tended to lean towards the Adidas boots but didn’t always discriminate and had the Nike ones too, as some of my favorite players wore Nike and some wore Adidas.

I also liked how these guys carried themselves off the pitch. They had an interest in fashion and appearance. This resonated with me and is one of the things that helped me to find my basic purpose. As I punched around a few ideas on what to write for this week’s article, I fell on this topic. And I know I am on the right track when the words flow with excitement as I type this. I felt that same excitement that was running through my veins and would get me up at 5am to watch the Champions League or the World Cup. Now, I love the fact that I can bring this same aesthetic and blend it into what we do as a brand. Being a boot fanatic growing up (and still to this day) and with the release of the latest Adidas Predators, I thought it somewhat befitting to profess my affinity for the game they call "The Beautiful Game."

Now I know with a blog post titled "football" this close to the Super Bowl, and being an LA brand with the Super Bowl even being played in our own backyard, one would think this was an article on the American version of "football." But nonetheless, here we are. I feel for me that period of early 00s was quite an era in football, particularly fashion-wise. Of course, you had the likes of Beckham and Ronaldo and the Galácticos of Luís Figo and Zidane and co. Football was an obsession away from my obsession, which was Rugby League at the time. And I blended the two where I could style-wise and now do the same by blending the two in my brand’s DNA. Being a luxury sportswear brand, it is only fitting that these stories form the excitement and passion that goes into the brand’s DNA. And when brands like Prada are making an Adidas Predator boot as an extension of their Adidas collaboration, the timing is right to tell this story, along with the fact that we also have some big things on the horizon within this space.