Style, Style 101

Style 101: Design Your Own Sneakers

Posted by Bruce Leong × November 18, 2015 at 2:03 pm

Custom anything can be intimidating and at the same time exciting. For custom suits, you have an expert guiding you towards the perfect suit just for you. Custom sneakers are totally different, you’re the narrator, the hero, the designer. This way of shopping for kicks is one of the best ways to buy them.

We at Dapper Guide have made a lot of custom sneakers in years past and while some have turned out great, some were horrible. Building your own shoes is a step in defining or redefining your style. If you look in your closet, you’ll likely see many themes, whether it’s colors, types of clothing, or even patterns. I myself am an accessory guy with many watches, colorful socks, I like darker colors, jeans, athletic sneakers (Over walking ones), no hats, and sweaters. Everyone has a style, a look, that is their own. So why aren’t you designing your own kicks? I’m sure you’ve put on a pair of either Vans, Converse, Nike, or Reebok shoes, you got the sizes down or you can try them on in the store. The fit is covered, now get to the design, silhouette, the colorway, everything.

When you get into designing kicks for yourself, think of it as the best shopping experience ever, you chose exactly what you want, and you are the judge. In all the brands we’ve designed sneakers from, the user interface is always very user-friendly and easy to use. The only issue we’ve come across is that there may not be the colors you want, the materials, certain parts can be changed while others can’t. This might be a problem for some, but it does create guidelines to design better sneakers. Lets be fair, you are not Jeff Staple or Tinker Hatfield. If you could change every single section of a sneaker with every imaginable color, that’d be overkill.

At Dapper Guide we’ve featured many great shoes that we recommend and use on a regular basis. In my closet of 30 pairs of shoes, I have 5 pairs of custom sneakers. Custom kicks are a great way to diversify your sneaker closet and create your own designs.

We’ve designed a few pairs of sneakers below and will go over each brand and their capabilities, what we like, and don’t like in the upcoming weeks. But, if you need sneakers, try designing them. Every brand has galleries of previously designed sneakers for inspiration. Here’s a few basic tips on designing your own sneakers:

1. Start with colors you know, you wear
2. Start small, design cheaper shoes, they won’t always come out how you imagined them
3. Create the design, then sit on it for a few hours or a day. Give the design some time to marinade in your mind
4. Get the right size!!!
5. Check the return policy for custom shoes
6. Share it with your friends, the honest ones
7. If you can, give it a name, personalize it
8. Pull the trigger, get them custom kicks

Good Luck!