What's your name and how can people find you on instagram?
My name is Mavin (May-vin) Wilkes and you can find me @Thatssomavin on IG!
My name is Mavin (May-vin) Wilkes and you can find me @Thatssomavin on IG!
I got the idea that I should start collecting sneakers back in 09 when I was in the Bay Area. My cousin, Christian, at the time was hyping up the Space Jam 11’s that were releasing and how he and his friends were going to go out and camp out for them. That was the catalyst of my sneaker journey for me.
The first pair in my collection, unbeknownst to me at the time, were the “Green Bean” Air Jordan 5 in ‘06! My dad, before he passed, bought my brother and I a pair and when you’re a kid, all you see are a pair of shoes. I remember in 08 in eighth grade, I wore them to PE one day because we were covering basketball that week and my coach loses his shit about my shoes and stopped the class and said, “those are rare”. And that moment is forever engrained in my memory.
My sneaker collection is unique not because of rarity or grails, but because of how I rock them, how I style them. My style makes my collection unique. I break a lot of ‘rules’ or ‘archetypes’ for my body type since I am a “big boy”, but I will always be the freshest in the room.
I choose hype over history. These two can work hand in hand but I would rather much prefer something that has substance behind it instead of something that only was driven because a group of individuals fucked with it heavy for like a day and then it fades to obscurity. I want longevity in anything that I do, and that would include my articles of clothing, mainly sneakers.
My grail of all grails will forever be the Nike Air Yeezy 2 “Solar Reds”. Those shoes will forever cross my mind and I will secure a pair one of these days in my size. I still remember being a teen back in Hawaii and I was at the Pearlridge mall just hanging out, this around the time where my heater in my collection were like air flight 89s, and I saw another teen wearing them with a clean ass fit. And like when I tell you my jaw dropped when I saw his fit it dropped. It was a clean hoodie, skinny Jean combo, topped off with the Yeezy 2s. I remember the feeling of genuinely craving a shoe.
The best release of last year was the Nike Dunk Sb “Chunky Dunkys”. It was the most unique and unexpected collab of the decade and it was executed so perfectly! You have quality and unique color way with various lace options that just give you a wide arrange of versatility while still being a statement piece. Best shoe of 2020!
My last pick up was a pair of Grim Reaper Nike x Off-White Blazers
The release I’m looking forward to is the rumored forever elusive AIR JORDAN LIGHTNING 4’s! I’VE BEEN PATIENT. IT’S TIME
I would like to see more upcoming POC/Black started brands get collaborations with bigger companies like Nike, Adidas, etc. These corporations feed off of pop culture to fill their pockets, and a great deal of that comes from the influence that POC’s, specifically Black people, have over the culture. So to invest in those upcoming brands is to invest back into community that has been taken advantage of for centuries.