Sneaker News 
Whether or not people were willing to listen, Eddie Huang always had a story to tell. The Floridian-turned-New Yorker has been fortunate to have a bevy of platforms to articulate his thoughts and opinions, and whether it’s through his ViceLand television show Huang’s World, his book Fresh Off The Boat, or for his East Village eatery BaoHaus, it’s obvious that his immutable passion and obsession with detail are what drive him forward. Those who knew of Eddie’s hustle before all the success remember him being just like any other hungry New Yorker looking for his own path, and now that he’s found it, he’s inspiring a new generation of individuals who can only be described as enthusiasts of food, hip-hop, travel, sneakers, and generally not giving a damn.
Eddie Huang’s first-ever collaboration with adidas launches at retail on Saturday, October 8th; the Superstar 80’s retails for $150, while the adilette slippers are priced at $50. Check out our brief chat below.
Above: Eddie and the BaoHaus crew, circa 2013.
SN: I remember about a decade ago, you were selling your kicks and tees at Soled Out in NYC.
Eddie: The dude that was with me, Steve, is still with me, from the first ever Soled Out. That’s how we met; he was selling laces and now, he runs BaoHaus. We met there and our connection is deep.
SN: Is a lot of the people hire from your inner circle, so to speak?
Eddie: All family. Steve has been my friend for a long time, Raf was one of the first friends I ever made in New York – i’ve known him for 11 years. My brother is here. Everyone we work with, we go many years deep.
Above: Eddie Huang and some Four Loko. Xiao Ye, his restaurant that closed in late 2010, was a hub for the now-banned alcoholic beverage.
SN: Your rise to the top has been pretty well documented through various channels. What was your absolute “bottom” moment?
Eddie: My bottom moment probably happened in 2001. I got arrested while I was in college…that was my real bottom moment. I caught a charge! And then I rehabilitated myself. Career wise, my bottom moment had to be, an it sounds funny in retrospect, but I was kinda fighting for Four Loko? I was a big Four Loko head and Charles Schumer tried to ban Four Loko and I started to throw all-you-can-drink Four Loko parties in the Lower East Side and that was just…it got really wild. And then I lost my restaurant and Sam Sifton (of the New York Times) gave me a bad review.
That was a low point and I tell all my cooks that work with us…look, if you don’t work hard and you’re not detail oriented and you’re not at the same rhythm every single day, someone’s gonna catch you slipping. If you don’t catch yourself slipping, someone else will, and what that moment taught me – I don’t wanna be a herb and run into the kitchen because Sam Sifton’s here and be like “oh you’re here? I’m gonna go cook”, I just sat in the front of the restaurant and hung out with my friends because that’s what I was doing. In retrospect, I shoulda gone in there. That moment really changed me. If you ask anyone that works with me or worked with me on the restaurants, the books, the shows, they’ll say that i’ve become much more intense.
Above: the Eddie Huang x adidas adilette; releases October 8th, $50
SN: What is it about you that makes a number of culturally inspiring brands want to work with you?
Eddie: I think the brands work with me…well number one, I think i’m creative, and number two, I stand for something. I’m not just trying to sell you a sandwich. There’s a story and there’s a message and I have strong values and i’m always telling a story. With this shoe, it’s a work shoe. It’s a shoe built for cooks – non-slip sole, stain proof upper, neoprene sock. At the end of the day we’re representing a lifestyle and an identity and we’re telling that story with the shoe. I think, in general, brands want to work with me because I know how to tell a story and express myself. adidas came to me and said, “of all the shoes, what would you want to make?” and I said without question, the adilette.
Everybody knows that growing up, the best sandals were the adidas slides. They’re iconic. Asians just be in the crib wearing sandals, and we wear them everywhere. You’ll go to a fish market with sandals on. There aren’t too many Asian-Americans putting on right now so I wanted to rep. But i’m a sneakerhead, so ever since I was a little kid I would look at a shoe and think if I got to do something with this shoe, this is what I would do. You can pretty much pick any shoe and i’ll tell you what I’d like to do with it.
Above: the Eddie Huang x adidas Superstar 80s; releases October 8th, $150
SN: You’ve definitely been a part of sneaker culture before it got so big. What are your general thoughts on it today?
Eddie: Anytime a niche subculture goes mainstream, it loses a part of itself, but then everything is cyclical. I’ve never seen anything in life that is actually linear. Shoe culture has become mainstream, but you can start to see that it’s bubbling back up again. I really think that adidas being innovative over the last year, with the Yeezys, the Boost, the NMD, that’s giving the other brands a lot of competition.
I genuinely think that sneaker culture is back, and now that it’s mainstream, what’s happening is that you’re seeing different branches. Back then it was like, let’s go to the iconic and street-cultural basketball shoes, and everyone was just freaking out over those, but now there are more lanes and sneaker culture is definitely going to be back.
SN: With every project you’ve worked on you’ve built a newfound awareness to what you are passionate about, such as food and Asian American culture. Is there anything else you’d like to convey to the mainstream audience that’s not there yet?
Eddie: The thing that I’ve always been trying to get across, is that there’s not one face to intelligence. Like back in the day, if you were into hip-hop and street culture, you probably weren’t smart, you were a dirty kid, you probably didn’t know how to use commas and semi-colons, whatever. Teachers snapped on me a lot for my grammar. Even in college, my professors were like “we love you, you’re a great writer, but unless you go to the grammar clinic and pass that test, we can’t let you pass with an English major”. What’s crazy was that I pretty much “won” that major…I got all the awards and whatnot, but they were like “your grammar is terrible”.
I think in the book Fresh Off The Boat and in the vernacular we use in Huang’s World, we’re telling the audience that you can be intelligent in many different faces. You can’t judge intelligence just on voice. One of the greatest books of all-time is The Diary Of Anne Frank and even though she didn’t have the command of the English language, she could convey feeling. At the end of the day, you’re just expressing yourself, and these (the books/show/ collaborative projects) are just mediums.
The Eddie Huang x adidas Superstar 80s and adilette release this Saturday, October 8th.
