Open Defiance©: January 2010

SD:Where are you from and how did you meet?
D:We are all from different parts of Florida. Chris Campbell is from Cocoa Beach, Richard Gordon is from Margate, FL(Ft. Lauderdale), and John Terromoccia is from Weston (Ft. Lauderdale). We all meet while attending school and the University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL. Chris actually had the idea to customize shoes and was familiar with it. He introduced us not only to each other, but to sneaker customization as a whole.
SD:So where do you get the inspiration for your customs?
D:Because it is three of us our inspiration comes from many different places. We each bring our own style or "flavor" to the design process. We pull from memories of our childhoods, experiences in college, basically all the different things that we have done, seen, and or lived through in life. And we would be amiss if we didn't give some of our customers credit too. We have to say that we have some customers that have pushed our creativity to the max with the ideas that they put in front of us.
SD:Speaking of creativity.....how did you figure out how to paint the rubber sole on the walking on water 2.0's?
D:Well, we knew that it would be hard to paint the soles because so many have tried before us, but we thought about why the paint comes off and what would help to keep it on better and we came up with ideas from there. So far they are holding up!
SD:What are your favorite customs that youve done so far?
D:Being that there is three of us it is really hard to say. The three shoes that where featured in the clash of the customizers are definitely high on the list.
SD:How long do you think youll be doing customs?
D:We really want to take customizing to a level that it has yet to reach. As far as we are concerned customizing is what we do and what we will always be doing.
SD:If you could work with any artist to design a pair of shoes who would it be?
D:Because we paint we would love to collaborate with a re-constructionist. Jester and Sharp020.
SD:What projects are you working on or want to work on in the future?
D:The project we are working on the hardest at the moment is our t-shirt line. We want our fans to be able to rock our shoes, but if they can't at least they can wear our designs on their back. :-)