IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO WALK WITH SALEHE BEMBURY AND NOT STARE AT EVERYONE’S FEET.
The asphalt is stiek-to-your-soles hot as Bembury, one of the most famous shoe designers on the planet, threads his way through the stalls of Pasadena, California’s legendary Rose Bowl Flea Market where, once a month for the last 50 years, designers like Christian Louboutin have gone elbow-to-elbow with bargain hunters in search of unique treasures. The thousands of stalls filled with millions of kniekknaeks feel, in many ways, more oppressive than the blaektop, a seemingly endless array of faded Yu-Ghi-Oh tees and frayed Lakers jerseys, mid-century dining tables, and 35 mm-era Olympus point-and-shoots. But as we walk, a quick glance beneath the card tables reveals a whole other world, a tacit language gestured through our footwear.
Gen Z goths and Gen X home-improvement types rock the same black Vans Old Skools (though in the latter case, they’re bruised and ripped at the seams). The millennials-with-a-job wear stock Air Max 90 and Yeezy 350s. Then there are the hypebeasts who have chosen something quirkier to signal their elevated taste. When we turn a corner, three young men are waiting—wearing, respectively, mint-condition Midnight Navy Nike Dunks, Off-White x Jordan 5 SP “Sails,” and turquoise New Balance “Water Be the Guide” sneakers—and that’s when I realize that this group isn’t here by coincidence.
I’m a professional design writer, and I can’t tell you who designed my car, my couch, my refrigerator, my home. But I do know that the 6-foot-3 man standing next to me created those shaggy-textured New Balances, as does everyone else in that group. They can also tell you that it’s the second most sought-after color combination of his reinterpretation of New Balance’s 2002R shoe, meaning it’ll run you about $300 on a resale site. The most coveted version—Bembury’s Peace Be the Journey, which captures the golden hues of Antelope Canyon—can fetch more than double that.
Bembury’s fans are the freshest dorks the eye has ever seen. They don’t ask, “Are you Salehe Bembury?!?” before sheepishly requesting a selfie, because they already know—recognizing Bembury from his Instagram posts, where he’s grown his follower count from virtually a standing start to more than 541,000 in the past two years, and confirming his celebrity by the shoes he’s wearing. Not just his impossible-to-get Crocs Pollex, but Pollex in the black “Sasquatch” colorway, which at this moment, haven’t yet shipped to the public. (Another tell: Bembury is conspicuously holding a just-purchased, single size 22 high-top that was made for the one person who could wear it, Shaquille O’Neal.)
Bembury, who carries
