For independent clothing designers, getting your first sneaker collab has become something of a coming-of-age ritual. If you freak it—like, say, Grace Wales Bonner did with her Adidas debut—the drop has the potential to supercharge your stature and open the door to even greater opportunities. And if it flops? Well…let’s just say it’s best not to flop.
Now entering the fray: Toronto menswear maestro Spencer Badu, whose eponymous label has teamed up with Hoka to reimagine the running specialist’s puffy-soled Elevon X. “This has definitely been a dream of mine,” Badu tells GQ. “I’ve always thought about what that first shoe for us could look like. I think we’ve mastered clothes at this point. So the next thing, naturally, felt like footwear.”
The shoe is riddled with details that speak to Badu’s Ghanaian roots: The striking yellow and black is a nod to Ghana’s flag; a small piece of hardware in the shape of a cowrie shell—a Ghanaian symbol of wealth—sits at the tongue; and a heatmap on the footbed pays homage to his brand’s longtime design codes. To give context and highlight the career milestone, Badu and Hoka produced a short film that captures the inspiration for the design, filmed across Toronto and Ghana.
Badu often references his personal life in his work, which makes his garments feel “much more organic,” he says. “So once I [began] building the narrative for the shoe, it felt only right to go back [to Ghana], to invest in creatives there to produce it. And it was surreal to be back there shooting. It felt right to give the shoe context, the same way I create my collections.”