Spring has finally arrived… Well OK, it’s probably global warming. But, while I was out enjoying the early stages of our planet’s demise, I noticed a marked rise in the number of Dutch style cruisers out and about on the city streets. While a cruiser isn’t my first choice for bombing around the Charles River, I appreciate seeing others enjoying the casual pace of a Dutch bike for running errands or riding a few blocks to a watering hole.

When I came back to my sketchbook, I was inspired to whip up a light, comfortable ladies sneaker for casual spring riding. This design is essentially a hybrid of a flat and a canvas deck shoe.

After some collaboration with the lovely Mandy McClausky, I decided to split the collar at the achilles tendon and have an thin underlay of foam backed lycra to maximize comfort and prevent gnarly blisters from constant abrasion. This also allowed me to add a little pop of color to the shoe.

The midsole is a slim plain vulcanized tape with a second layer of thicker tape at the toe. I designed the heel logo as a weld of 3M reflective to add a touch of night-time visibility using an element that would be on there anyway. 

I hesitate to post a lot of subjective content on this blog, as the focus of this website is new urban footwear concepts, but I was so repulsed by this bike design that I thought it was worth sharing. 

This collaboration bike, brought to you by Pharrell Williams and Domeau & Peres, is a steel frame fixed gear bike with all of the primary features wrapped in buffalo leather. This useless bike costs about $27,000. It couldn’t be more obvious that this was not designed by people who actually log miles on a bicycle.

Price tag aside, who is this designed for? What I hate about this bike is that it’s a weak concept. Wrapping some bullshit in expensive leather does not make it good or valuable. It’s not designed for city riding because you’d be an idiot to lock up that bike anywhere but the suburbs. It’s not designed to be ridden when there’s any moisture in the air because that leather will get completely destroyed around the chain. It’s not even taken far enough to be in the MoMA. This bike just sucks.

I respect that some people want the most baller variant of any item they buy. But this is like the worst bike ever for almost thirty thousand dollars. Trek has some insanely hot, functional and expensive urban bikes if you want some hot accessories like leather grips and nylon belt action.

In terms of function, you’d be better off with a Huffy.