Not too long before his first runway during London’s menswear presentations, A Cold Wall designer, Samuel Ross, checked in with SSense and discussed some of the motivation behind his label and also chatted a bit about his collaboration with Nike on those now highly-regarded Air Force 1 kicks.
In speaking on the look of the line, Ross stated, “I’m almost re-introducing and celebrating a new phase of British culture that people just didn’t know existed. I feel like it’s my job to present these new ideas and push more radical ideas and extremes. A kid who has no education, if he was to push a similar idea, it might get shut down because he hasn’t gone through the process of what it takes to go through an idea, whereas I have. So, it’s my job to make sure that the purest form of what I know is expressed and represented appropriately.”
In discussing his goals for the collaboration with Nike, Ross said, “A lot of people are having their own takes on Nike shoes right now, which is great, but my job once again as a designer is to slow down time a bit. I don’t want it to be of the moment or trendy. I want it to be something that will age beautifully.”
Part of the exchange included an editorial, which was shot by photographer Saeka Shimada in Tokyo, Erick Faulkner in Paris, and Alex English in London.
Check out some of the images from the shoot plus video below. More at ssense.com.