Allegro and Livid Lows

I created this concept with the Fast and Furious films in mind.

I had a great many things planned for them that did not work out, unfortunately, and it is because of this that the shoes have a really simple design.

I'll explain.

Originally the concept for the pair was that the shoes would represent a modded car. I got this awesome idea for a pearlescent purple, black, and bluish-gray colorway with white details that looked in my mind to be a perfect representation of street cars. There's a very specific purple tone that only occurs on cars that I wanted to capture.

I found the color, or close to it, by painting very thin coats of black, purple, and various combinations of the two over the layers that received the effect. I did this over and over for many hours until the color changed as it turned in the light.

Before any of this was started, however, I gave the shoes to my fellow customizer and recon artist JBF Customs. He installed my custom "hood" with an incredibly dope carbon fiber material, indicative of the awesome custom hoods many modded cars display. It's because of his additions that the shoes look as good as they do once the rest of my plan failed.

What I originally had planned was for the toe to represent the hood, custom metal hood pins and all, and the frontal panel to represent the quarterpanel with decals of popular car modding brands, then the back panel would have a painting of the movie poster.

The hood pins idea fell through in a valiant fashion after many attempts. As I could not mess with the carbon fiber for fear of ruining something that could not be fixed, I had to scrap the idea. I was left only with the F&F movie poster to paint on the heel.

Every time I tried to paint back there, however, it just made the overall design look worse. Because these are lows, no detail at all could be placed on the back without making it look terrible for me. I bit the bullet, accepted that the end result, while far from the original concept, was better this way, and sent pics to the client. I was lucky enough to have a street racing Kiwi stay with me for a few weeks, who told me the best decals to paint, so at least that part is legit, but I am rather disappointed that my vision could not be created.

Still, I think these are one of my more versatile pairs save for the unique colorway, and it was a delightful experience to work with someone as talented as JBF.

Detail shots: