Sometimes you've got to give ugly sneakers a little love. Not ugly like the Kobe II's Adidas put out way back when. Remember those? We're talking more ‘ugly’ like super-loud mishmash of different patterns and colorations on a sneaker. If you’ve been in the sneaker game for a little while now, you’ve probably haven’t missed one of the infamous “What The—” models that Nike drops every now and again.
(Source: hypebeast.com)
The most recent ‘What The’ models to come out of Nike’s arsenal are these Lebron 12’s. The darker colorways gear don’t look half bad together. If anything, they gear you up for Fall. We really dig the dark blue, for obvious reasons. We’ve got a dark brown that would look pretty good on there too.
If you’ve never seen our dude El Cappy aka El Capitan aka Eric Lowry from Detroit, Michigan, you need to check his custom joints out. A couple years ago, he absolutely killed it with his own version of a ‘What The Dunk.’
(Source: sneakerfiles.com)
El Cap’s Dunk had so many wild elements on there, from elephant print to leopard print to Futura dudes to the Heineken star. But somehow, he still managed to put everything together and kill it.
What El Cappy is showed with his What The Dunks, is that you could still pay homage to this style without just painting random colors. His brush skills took this custom next level, seamlessly blending iconic prints and images with color blocking.
Imagine putting the last three colorway drops of your favorite sneaker together on one shoe. How do you think it’s going to turn out? Probably pretty bust, but what’s pretty cool about the ‘What The’ model is that somehow, the mix up of colorways usually turn out good. Maybe making random colors look good is just the designers at Nike putting in work. Or, this might just be one of those custom job better left to the pros.
(Source: hypebeast.com)
If you remember the KD 7 ‘What The’s that dropped in May, this pair was part high-brow and part-low. Think Mondrian meets New York City subway.
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(Source: artpause.com), (Source: flickriver.com), (Source: hypebeast.com)
These things were pretty dope.
But don’t steer clear of your personal custom ‘What The’ flip yet. If it turns out good, you could paint something up that looks like it would go into an art gallery. Take a note from some of our Angelus Direct-sponsored artists, who have done their own version of the ‘What The.’
They might not be the easiest shoe to get inspiration for a custom piece, but you could definitely pull off something similar with our paint. Start with the 12 Color Assortment Kit...
and let the creativity flow.