His only visible nerdy streak is a colour-coordinated wardrobe, but you
nevertheless wonder if choosing what trainers to wear from his cardboard
towers each day might be an arduous task. “I just pick at random. I like to
wear what I love every day.” Having acquired most of his collection the hard
way – sourced at specialist shops – Patel is not a fan of the internet:
“Everything is there to be found, so those moments of surprise are rarer.”
Yet he retains a distinctly relaxed approach to all those trainers. They
represent, he argues, “more of an accumulation” than a collection. “If my
house burns down, they can all go up. They are an extension of myself, a
part of me, but not all of me; they’re not the be-all and end-all.”
DAN KEOGH, 21, property developer with his family firm, Manchester
For the new generation of trainer fans, brand collaborations are now supremely
important, and none fuses fashion and sportswear more effectively than the
Adidas-Yojhi Yamamoto line, Y-3. For Dan Keogh, it’s more than just designer
gear; it’s a way of standing out amid a sea of Adidas-clad peers.
“To all my mates I’m the Y-3 kid. It’s in no way a geeky tag, it’s my thing
and people identify with it. Some people collect stamps; I collect Y-3.” But
while his enthusiasm for this collaboration makes him very much a product of
our time, his father got him started with his collection. “My dad’s style
and passion for something that looked unique rubbed off on me.” And with
Manchester the unofficial British capital of Adidas, “looking cool was all I
wanted. You can buy a pair of trainers anywhere for £60 and see 200 people
wearing them, but everyone knows everything about them. There’s nothing
special in being the same as everybody else.”
Unlike high-street favourites such as Nike, Reebok and Adidas, there is a
kudos in the Y-3 brand, and through what most would see as its prohibitive
cost, it has managed to retain an aura of exclusivity. For Dan, “It’s a step
above all other sportswear.”
Y-3 launched a trainer in homage to the iconic Manchester nightclub, Hacienda,
based on its Sprint shoe. Only 250 pairs were sold worldwide – but Dan
thought nothing of queueing for five hours to get his hands on a pair. “They
are my most important piece, a combination of Y-3 and my city, and I saw Ian
Brown [of the Stone Roses] wearing them, too.”
Sportswear has its own network of investors, buying up limited-edition apparel
to re-sell, inflating prices by up to 20 times their retail value, and Dan
has pieces that are so “out there” that he never envisages
wearing them. “But I don’t do any of it for money, I just want
to be different.” The brand is becoming a modern heirloom for the
Keoghs of this world. “I hope that one day my dad will pass his pieces
on to me, just as I want to pass them on to my son.”
PHIL TUCKER, 37, co-founder of brand consultancy and production company
Attention Seekers, London
The Fila collection of Phil Tucker (below) could be described as a labour of
love. He first noticed the brand at the age of 7, when he saw Björn Borg
playing in Fila at a Wimbledon final.
“At that age, it seemed as if there were big, commanding presences –
Borg, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe – all wearing it. Being a Seventies
boy, my plimsolls were unbranded, as was pretty much everything else I
wore.” He grew up in Hampshire but was an avid Arsenal supporter and
at 13, when he finally started going to matches, the “elite” brand resurfaced
in his life. “It was the uniform of the fans.” For a boy from
the provinces, “Fila was the ultimate ‘in’ to another world.”
The brand was exclusive – only available in big cities – and seeking
it out was an adventure. His parents said it was too expensive, so he saved
up his paper-round money. “Then, without my parents knowing, I went
all the way to Birmingham just for a T-shirt. When I wore it, I felt a sense
of unity with other fans, understanding the lengths we’d all gone to.” He
collected as much as he could in his teens, but was always aware of the pieces
he didn’t have.
Fila gradually realised this working-class market had potential and, Tucker
argues, the company sold out. In 1995, about a decade after he’d begun
collecting, he was walking down Queensway in London when his world crashed.
“I saw a woman’s high-heeled patent trainer with the logo stretched along
the upper. It was the lowest point ever, a fashion disaster. I felt so angry.”
Tucker’s rage drove him on to preserve the brand as he remembered it. What
had, until then, been a minimal collection grew – “I looked for the pieces
I’d missed out on.”
But collecting on this scale took its toll. “I was a serious geek. It became
an addiction,” with Tucker spending whole nights trawling eBay. His
moment of triumph came when he sourced Borg-era Fila from a tennis club in
New Mexico. “It was like finding treasure, I couldn’t sleep.” His wife did
not share his obsession: “When she was pregnant the first time, she wanted
rid of the sportswear. I told her, ‘It will mean something.’ I knew the
moment would come when I’d make an impact.”
It did. After nine years, Tucker felt that his collection was finally complete
and planned a London exhibition. Fila sent down its sales and marketing
teams. “I, a consumer, found myself in the position of talking them
through this era, telling the brand where it had all gone wrong by
demonstrating it at its best.”
To Tucker’s amazement, the brand itself had no archive originals from the
decade. “Culturally, Fila was the heart and soul of something I wanted
to protect, but all that emotional investment was in the hands of people who
had no idea.”
His lifelong passion was finally vindicated when Fila offered to buy his
collection (Tucker sold them 200 items, about half of what he had amassed)
and bring him on board for the launch of its heritage collection. But
despite his success, Tucker worries for the new generation of fans. “They
are in the hands of sportswear companies which think that culture has to
perform financially first and foremost.”
The Fashion v Sport exhibition runs at the V&A from August 5-January
4, 2009. Tickets cost £5.90 by phone (0870 9063883), £5 plus handling charge
online (www.vam.ac.uk), and £5 in person
