Nice Kicks: It seems like the age-old balancing act for professional artists is meeting the demands of the market while still fulfilling their artistic vision. How do you make it work?
Devlin Braswell: [I make it work] because I don’t do this for money. Yes, I make money off of customs, but I don’t need to do customs. I’ll still make $80 grand a year from the military, from my businesses that I get from that and the website that I run. My whole thing is morals over money. Never sell your morals or your artistic capabilities for money because that no longer makes you an artist.
There’s a photographer, Cunningham from New York, who doesn’t take any money. They have a great documentary on him where he says he won’t take money because once they take your money they can tell you what to do. I did the “Versace Lab 5s” when the 3Lab5s came out. I did six pairs and every day over the last year I get an email from someone wanting them and I say no because I’m not money hungry. Every day I turn down $500 and the custom is not hard to do. If you do more than one of the same thing, you’re not an artist anymore, you’re a mass producer. I don’t think that art should be mass produced. Sometimes I’ll do a run of five, but I’d rather it be a one-of-one because word customize means that you want something different, so why would you want me to customize something that ten other people have? That’s not what I’m in it for. I’ll have people send me other customizers’ work and ask me how much I’d charge them to make it. I tell them they need to find the artist who they got the picture from and pay them for their work because that’s not my place to re-do his custom. A lot of customizers wouldn’t do that, they’ll take the money because that’s what they’re in it for. That’s the ugly part of customizing right now because there are so many people that are just in it for the money. There’s nothing wrong with that, people are going to make money how they’re going to make it and as long as they’re not hurting anybody or stealing that’s fine.
That’s one thing that people really don’t understand about me: I don’t do this for the money. I do it because I love the art and I love to create. If you give me a good concept and I think your idea is cool and I would like to see it made, then I’ll accept your order. If you ask me for something corny or I think it’s been done to death, I’ll tell you I’m not interested in it or I’m booked. I’m not going to wake up in the morning and go, “Yeah! Let me jump on this showing machine and make this Red October!” [Laughs] I’m definitely not going to do that.
Nice Kicks: You’ve obviously been involved in the sneaker culture for a very long time. What would you like to see change to better the culture?
Devlin Braswell: I would love to see reselling die, but not the art of reselling that we knew. I just bought a pair of “Ginger” Air Jordan XVIs off eBay for $250, I think that’s reselling the right way. That shoe is from 2002 and I thought $250 was a great price. But this reselling thing where Jordans come out on Saturday and Saturday afternoon they’re gonna sell for $400? I think that’s asinine. I hate that. People can bid these Yeezys up to $4,000 and then it gets press. Like the Riff Raff thing, nobody’s going to buy it but it gets press. It gives this item an artificial value and people don’t know. A lot of people are in the sneaker game because they want to stunt on Instagram, but that whole process is really killing the game. You’ve got fakes now that are even better than the shoes that Nike released. We’ve been getting ripped off by Nike for a while because the price kept going up but the quality was deteriorating. Now they came out with the remasters and only charge a little bit more, but they can do that because we’ve been paying more money for a lower quality product– and it’s because of this reselling. The internet is giving shoes an artificial value. Do I think these shoes will have the same value as they do now ten years from now? No, I don’t. I think that you should just buy the shoes that you like because you want to wear them. Soon, the game is going to be so diluted because the quality of the fakes is so good that you won’t be able to tell. If people can’t tell and just bought some Air Jordan 4s because they wanted to sell them, it’s going to be like the steroid era! People won’t want to buy 4s because the fake 4s were better than the real 4s and they can’t tell the difference. Just buy what you like. The resale game is really hurting the sneaker culture.
Nice Kicks: Lastly, what can readers of the site expect next from you?
Devlin Braswell: For 2015, I will be having a line of varsity jackets coming out soon. Also, I’m working on a women’s shoe line. Shoe design is my thing, but I feel like you have more of a chance to really break if you do women’s shoes. With men, if it’s not Nike or Jordan, it’s going to be pretty hard to get your name out there if it’s your own shoe. I actually have a couple of collabos coming this year, too. I have a custom collab with Mache, with Kickasso, and a few of the top customizers where we’re going to mix recon and painting because if I’m going to leave this game I want it to have a good name and keep moving. When I joined the military I stopped. That’s why I have respect for people like JBF, Emmanuel Labor and Mache. I respect those guys immensely because when I was gone they took the game to another level and kept it going. Seeing them actually inspired me to do it again so that they could see my vision and the standpoint I was coming from. You’ll see collabs and you’ll also see a lot more recons that aren’t just Jordans but also LeBrons and shoes that people don’t take apart and rebuild. I had a really good 2014, but I’m going to expand in 2015.
