Salmon Shoes

I just came across this very-minor-curiosity news story:

Macklemore Debuts New, Personalized Air Jordans, And They're Panned By Fans

This is Macklemore the rapper, he of the duo with Ryan Lewis and the "Thrift Shop" song. Truth be told, I've never listened to it and have no particular plans to. However, this thing with the shoe does interest me.

Basically, Macklemore presented a Jordan Brand shoe with custom coloring inspired by salmon, dubbed the "Northwest King Salmon Melo," which I assume relates to the fact that he is from Seattle (the "Melo" denotes the basic shoe platform being the Carmelo Anthony signature model). That's all cool, in theory at least. But here is what the shoe actually looks like:

Source: Instagram

Now, the first thing that one notices about this shoe is how monotone it is. Custom color notwithstanding, it would seem that the key to personalizing footwear would be to include more chromatic variation than that.

Twitter user @lankdan calls the shoe out for looking like "uncooked fish," which is true. But I grew up in Alaska, and I've seen many salmon, and the shoe looks just as much like cooked fish as uncooked fish. The real point is that they look like the inside of a fish. Where is the silver, the scale patterns?

It is actually a fantastic idea to take visual inspiration from salmon, but at least half of the equation has to be the skin of the fish. Even when "reddening" in spawning mode, a king (chinook) salmon is primarily defined by its silvery outer color, like so:

Source: Wikipedia

Combining a silvery scale pattern with the characteristic "salmon pink" internal color is a great potential design scheme. Basketball shoes, already prone to just-as-gaudy motifs, often incorporating shiny patent leather (not to mention herringbone out-sole traction patterns), would be a perfect fit.

Long story short, this shoe is a missed opportunity.

However, it does bear mentioning that actual salmon skin, or "salmon leather" as it is often called, is a real thing in the world of clothing, albeit on more of a trendy specialty basis at this point.

Even just in the realm of whimsical art, here is an example of how much fun salmon, specifically the outside of them, can be:

"Canned Salmon" by Chris Arend
(Anchorage - Wild Salmon on Parade)

<>