Senior Footwear Designer for Jordan Brand, Octavio Lubrano speaks on the new Jordan Jeter Throwback shoe.
The living legend short-stop for the New York Yankees, Derek Jeter drops his 9th shoe this week for the super popular Michael Jordan Brand. Global Grind chopped it up with the lead designer of the project Octavio Lubrano to discuss the process, the pride and the passion of Jeter’s favorite past-time that you get to rock on your feet.
Trunner Days
The Trunner was the first time that [longtime Nike/Jordan designer] Tinker [Hatfield] and the team here tried to mix Running and Training together. That’s where the word Trunner came about. Derek was involved in those early phases of the Trunner products. From that there is a tendency to be sports specific. So Derek became the first Jordan Brand athlete that wasn’t a basketball player. That’s pretty special, this being his 9th shoe.
Derek’s Requests For The Shoe
When meeting with him about The Captian show in 2006, he mentioned how when you are younger you are flexible, faster and you take for granted your athleticism. Every year that goes by he feels that he has to work harder. He mentioned that he is incorporating a lot more running. So we took that in mind for this shoe and added the ability to make it a running shoe fit wise. We made this Throwback ready for turf one day, field turf and also dirt.
The Fit and Function
When you go from running, stealing bases and in-fielding there is a lot of stress on the fore-foot so, there are two ways of fixing that: one is having the proper flex and two the proper stability. The right balance sometimes means simplifying the shoe. Too much support could be bad as well. So we just went back to basics to get the form and fit right. We would go back and add the rich and lush details. Leathers and the right materials are important. You can’t take short cuts, we take pride in that.
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Derek The Man
Derek has a quiet confidence on and off the field and like Michael Jordan on the court, Derek performs at the highest level on the highest stage.
9 Moments on the shoes
We take pride in telling great stories at Jordan. I also worked on the Jordan 6 rings shoe and I learned how to tell a story though that shoe. Six rings is something that you can’t take away from MJ. So when it came time for Derek’s 9th shoe as a team (marketing and design) we had a brainstorming session. We said that in basketball 10,000 points means something, 6 championships means something, but in baseball we never really told a story beyond the personality. What’s the best way to celebrate Jete
