Marcel Winatschek

My Own ZX Flux

I went to a Fashion Week event in Berlin where adidas showed off an app for designing your own ZX Flux sneakers. The concept is simple: upload a photo, mess with the colors, order the shoe. Around 120 euros for the finished product.

Pharrell was there with his hat and what looked like genuine disinterest. He was somehow the most honest person at the event. Everyone else was performing.

The app actually works. I fed it a photo and it remapped the colors across the shoe. I deliberately gave it something ugly and it handled it fine. No design experience needed.

The actual sneaker doesn’t matter much to me. What’s intriguing is the access. You could make something completely your own without knowing anything about design, and that gap—between total creative control and total incompetence—is what makes customization tools worth thinking about. The shoe is just the vehicle.