The creative genius of sneaker design | Salehe Bembury

0:03Salehe Bembury: You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. A little while back, industrial designer and artist Salehe Bembury was unemployed, sitting on his couch, eating cereal, scrolling job listings. Not long after, he was on a plane to Milan to design sneakers for Versace. And when he looks back now on how that leap happened, he credits something surprisingly simple.

0:32Cloe Shasha Brooks: Really what that was more about was the power of asking and what that can bring you.

0:36Salehe Bembury: In this conversation with TED curator Chloe Shasha Brooks, Salehi walks through, yes, pun intended, the ideas behind some of his most beloved designs. He's collaborated with New Balance, Versace, and Crocs, and now runs his own brand, Sponge. But the thread running through all of that is play. It's there in the Easter eggs hidden in his designs, in the way he still comes up with designs, like the nine-year-old who once sculpted a sneaker out of clay. And in the working whistle he put on the back of a hiking shoe, just because it felt cool.

1:09Cloe Shasha Brooks: That was maybe a little bit of my industrial design background, you know, trying to figure out how to find utility within maybe something that doesn't have as much. But then more importantly, I think it's kind of cool to just do something first and forward. There's never been a whistle on a shoe.

1:22Salehe Bembury: Salehi makes the case that staying playful and protecting your own creativity might be the most serious advantage you have. Whether that means asking for what you want, telling a story with what you make, or refusing to overthink your best stuff. That's coming up right after a short break.

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4:15Salehe Bembury: And now, our TED Talk of the day. Salehi, thank you so much for joining us.

4:21Cloe Shasha Brooks: Thanks for having me.

4:22Salehe Bembury: So among many of your popular designs, you made Crocs cool. And this is called the Crocs Pollux clog based on your own fingerprint mold. Elise here, Chloe has just put a few photos up on the screen of the Crocs Pollux clog she's referring to. Imagine if Crocs had visible grooves that look like fingerprints all across the shoe, even on the sole. And what I love is that Crocs reached out to you asking if they could send you some shoes. And you said, how about we actually collaborate instead? And they said yes. So once they said yes, how did you decide to do this specifically?

4:57Cloe Shasha Brooks: So it was a great honor because they first wanted to collaborate. And then when I sent them what I didn't know was a kid's Croc shoe, they let me know that they loved that I was thinking of the form of the Croc, which a lot of collaborators in the past were simply reskinning the Croc, maybe adding gibbets. and I was thinking of the form and that comes from my industrial design background. So once they saw that I was interested in manipulating the form, they asked me if I wanted to be the first collaborative designer to create a crock from scratch, which I immediately did a Birdman hand rub and said yes.

5:30Cloe Shasha Brooks: And so this is the result of that. And so initially I had to make sure that I fostered and maintained the existing elements of the crock DNA and made sure that I didn't scare away the existing consumer and, you know, getting the honor of working with a brand like Crocs, you get to work with their heritage and their DNA. So I had to make sure to maintain that and then also introduce my own brand identity, put it through a new lens and potentially speak to a new audience.

5:56Salehe Bembury: You know, it's pretty amazing because you've had a really amazing journey as a footwear designer. You started at Payless in 2009 and then you started doing collaborations with a lot of brands like New Balance, Kohan, Versace to name a few, and now you run your own brand called Sponge. So to help paint the picture of how you've forged your own path, I'd love for you to share the story that I just love of you being on your couch, eating cereal in a moment of unemployment, and you somehow went from scrolling on LinkedIn to convincing Versace to give you your dream job. Will you tell us that story?

6:28Cloe Shasha Brooks: Yeah, so cereal on my couch, that is a description of the image of unemployment that I was experiencing at that time. I was using all of the tools that have been given to us for outreach, LinkedIn, Craigslist, maybe it was even Facebook at the time, and sending messages to whoever would accept them. I reached out to a Versace design director, and I proposed an opportunity. I said the sneaker industry is a multi-billion dollar business, and traditionally that consumer isn't paying attention to fashion brands. They're traditionally paying attention to the sneaker brands that we're all used to and probably wearing right now.

6:59Cloe Shasha Brooks: But then there was this mass education that happened that Raph, Raph Simmons, Adidas, this Nike Combe de Garcon, and now this massive consumer is aware of the fact that fashion houses can make sneakers. And so I reached out to them. A few days later, Donatella herself responded, said she loved my ideas. She said that she wanted me to come out to Milan and present to her what I thought the sneaker program could be. I went out to Milan a few days later, presented a combination of merchandising and design and sales insight, and she loved it. And she was like, I want to hire you. I want you to move to Milan right away.

7:34Cloe Shasha Brooks: Do you want to consult? She was really open about what the opportunity could be. Because she was so open, I asked if I could have my own design studio in Los Angeles and travel to Milan monthly for factory visits and shows and whatnot. And she said yes. So I went outside and did my pursuit of happiness cry in the streets because my life changed instantly. But really what that was more about was the power of asking and what that can bring you. Yeah.

8:03Salehe Bembury: So throughout your career, you've always used color and form and function in a way that's felt really playful. There's so many nuanced details in your designs. Like there's so many Easter eggs that people could find if they know what to look for. So I'm going to show some pictures of your shoes, and I'd love to just hear you share your design philosophy for each of them. So tell us about these. Up on the screen now are a handful of beautifully colorful sneakers. The soles and the sides of the shoes are all different bright, vivid colors, and the shoelaces, another different color. They look like a cross between trail running shoes and fashion sneakers.

8:37Cloe Shasha Brooks: So this was my first ever collaboration with a Chinese brand called Anta. This was a from scratch collaboration. A lot of collaborations these days are color ups and skinnings, but this was a white, I guess the result of a white piece of paper. And I guess what I was trying to accomplish here was an introduction to the footwear industry and the audience. Because before that, I was working at different brands. And this was the first time that a piece of footwear was going to feature my name. So there was a lot of things that I had to introduce to my existing audience.

9:08Salehe Bembury: How about this one? The image on the screen is of a pastel pink shoe. Smooth edges. It looks a bit like a basketball shoe.

9:15Cloe Shasha Brooks: This is the Halley 1. It's the first signature sneaker of Tyrese Halliburton. I became a forward designer because of basketball. That was my kind of initial inspiration that made me feel the emotions that I believe I'm giving to others now. It is with Puma. He recently wore it in the previous NBA finals. It had a pretty tragic ending, but it was still amazing to be a part of that shoe and for it to fall at that part of my career was really special.

9:44Salehe Bembury: I love these. The image here is of black and white Nike sneakers encased in what looks like cyan blue hard foam that are serving as soles. The foam is cut to be straight lines, jagged cuts, not smooth around the edges like shoe soles usually are.

9:59Cloe Shasha Brooks: This was a shoe I did with Pierre Moss, which is a high fashion brand. The creative director reached out to me and he asked me to create a shoe that represented the feeling of being financially stuck. I knew that I couldn't use concrete, so then I quickly thought of using silicone as the solution And that's what I made.

10:18Salehe Bembury: And that was in a runway show, right?

10:20Cloe Shasha Brooks: Yes, this was in like a SW16 runway show, I think. Or SS.

10:25Salehe Bembury: How about these? The image here is of a forest green sneaker with dark blue soles that look technical, like a trail runner. There are textural lines across the top of the shoe that look a bit like a topographical map.

10:37Cloe Shasha Brooks: These are a bunch of images from my Montclair Genius collaboration. This was my first ready-to-wear collection. And as of late, a lot of my work has been described as like world building. And this was that in real form because I got to create a full installation that helped further tell the story of the ready-to-wear collection. It featured footwear, accessories, and there were some pretty big billboards as well, which I hadn't experienced thus far in my career.

11:01Salehe Bembury: And when you did this ready-to-wear collection, how did you go from just doing footwear to clothing? How did you think about that? I think one of the most difficult things for an independent designer is creating your signature language.

11:14Cloe Shasha Brooks: Like, what is your, you know, what is that signature identity that someone can recognize without even seeing a logo? So once I kind of established that, I think it now makes it easy to bring that across different categories of product.

11:27Salehe Bembury: And then this video. The social media video that's being played right now is of a man wearing pink New Balance sneakers sitting on a child's sled and slowly inching himself forward through sand. The video is full of color with a pink backdrop. It's just so charming.

11:45Cloe Shasha Brooks: That is Thundercat. That's Steven. That was for a New Balance project called Sand Be the Time. A lot of the projects are influenced by experiences. So this was from a trip. Where was that? That was the Pink Sand Dunes in Utah. And that basically was the foundation of the story for that shoe. So the average person looking at that shoe might see a pink shoe. But then with the story of the Pink Sand Dunes and, you know, relating the execution of the chenille into the colors of the sunset. Now you've cultivated a community, you've invited people to come into your world, and you've told a story.

12:20Salehe Bembury: You got really into hiking in nature. You started designing outdoor shoes and gear, and in one instance you translated Arizona's Antelope Canyon into a shoe called Peace Be the Journey, which came out in 2020. And that shoe, even though it came out six years ago, is still so popular that it's being sold for markup on resale sites like eBay to this day consistently for a lot of money. So tell us why you think this shoe is still so popular.

12:46Cloe Shasha Brooks: Potentially that I told a story that people could resonate with. This was influenced by a trip to Antelope Canyon, a beautiful place for those that haven't been. And ultimately the goal was to make this shoe represent that experience. So if you're looking at that shoe, it's an orange shoe. But then when I tie the orange to the tones of Antelope Canyon and the The blue of the end represents the sky and the maroons represent the tones and the sunset. And then the campaign tells that story further. Now, when people wear that shoe, sure, it may be a shoe that they think looks cool, but then they now feel like they're a part of a community.

13:21Cloe Shasha Brooks: I remember when I first started traveling to China for work, I would always look for people wearing Supreme because I assumed that there was a higher likelihood that they spoke English. So sometimes there are visual cues that signify community.

13:34Salehe Bembury: That's so cool. So staying on that New Balance theme, you designed the New Balance 574 Yurt shoe with a whistle on the heel.

13:42Cloe Shasha Brooks: Yes.

13:42Salehe Bembury: So most designers would never think of that. So I'm going to share this with all of you so you can see what I'm talking about.

14:02Salehe Bembury: So how did you think of that?

14:04Cloe Shasha Brooks: So New Balance tasked me with the opportunity of creating a shoe from scratch. Around this time, my buddy Samuel Ross, who's a designer based out of London, he had this Nike shoe called the Zoom Vermeer, and it featured a molded plastic piece on the back of the shoe. And I'd wear them a lot, and people would always ask me, what does that molded piece do? And I would respond, nothing at all. And people seemed to still accept it. And I found that really fascinating because it was a very unused area of real estate of the shoe. And so I thought to myself, what if this area of real estate could be used for something functional?

14:35Cloe Shasha Brooks: Obviously, if that functional thing was filled with technology, now you're looking at a$2 ,000 shoe, so that wasn't an option. So then I thought of how I could manipulate plastic to function. That became a whistle. Truthfully, I created the whistle without thinking of the why, the purpose. I just thought a whistle was cool. And then for the prototype, I glued a whistle into a New Balance shoe, and I met with the team. and I told them a whole story of, think about camping with your friends, and it's almost dusk, and you stop to take a picture of some deer, and your friends walk ahead, and now you've lost them.

15:11Cloe Shasha Brooks: And then I grabbed a shoe from beneath the table, blew the whistle, and then they all sloped up. And so, again, that was, you know, maybe a little bit of my industrial design background, you know, trying to figure out how to find utility within maybe something that doesn't have as much. but then more importantly I think it's kind of cool to just do something first and four there's never been a whistle on a shoe and if you were to think about how much energy it would take for you to scream if you broke your ankle on a hike alone compared to the amount of energy it would just simply take you to blow a whistle so giving the consumer a tool seemed like a good opportunity

15:47Salehe Bembury: One thing I've heard you say before is that genius can be created in seconds and crap can be created over months I think that's such a great line.

15:58Cloe Shasha Brooks: That's why you never charge hourly.

16:00Salehe Bembury: That is so true. No, anyone who hires consultants. So how does someone optimize their life so that they can avoid creating crap over long amounts of time?

16:11Cloe Shasha Brooks: Maybe avoid distraction. I've always found that when trying to create, not getting too distracted by the thing that we all have in our pockets right now and constantly scrolling other people's ideas. social media, the internet, Instagram, it's a great sense of inspiration, but it can also create a massive cloud of distraction that helps you or makes you lose sight of your own vision. And so I think finding that balance between the work and avoiding distraction is important. Yeah.

16:42Salehe Bembury: One thing that you're known for beyond your shoes is speaking about those Easter egg details in your work is the boxes that you actually designed for the shoes, the shoe boxes. And so any sneakerhead I've spoken to is like, oh, Slay, he's boxes. I love collecting his shoes because they stack so beautifully. So how much time do you spend thinking about how the shoe will look on the foot versus in the box?

17:06Cloe Shasha Brooks: Well, I just think I often go back to, you know, I'm pretty experienced in footwear design, but I have my master's in footwear consumerism. So I just think of those moments that resonated with me and that made me feel cool or more athletic or magical. And so I'm really just trying to recreate those moments. I really think it's important to take advantage of every area of real estate of a product, because as creatives, all we have is that reveal moment, right? So when we reveal that product, how does it make the audience feel? Do they like it immediately? Do they not like it immediately? And then they see it over and over again, and then they start to like it.

17:42Cloe Shasha Brooks: I love that relationship with product, because it's almost like Steve Jobsian, if that's the term. because, you know, he said the consumer doesn't know what they want until you show it to them. So the Crocs Polyx being an example, like there were a lot of people that shoe upset at first and then slowly seeing them come around to both that product specifically or even the brand of Crocs was really cool to witness because you almost were like changing minds with product.

18:10Salehe Bembury: So this passion of yours runs deep. You, when you were nine years old, you made this Air Jordan 11 out of clay. And I would love to know, do you still feel like the nine-year-old version of yourself when you do your work today?

18:26Cloe Shasha Brooks: Absolutely. I mean, if you love what you do, it's not a job. This is pretty much what I've wanted to do my entire life. So there's a certain level of freedom. There's a certain level of nostalgia that exists within my work. To quote Kanye West, you know, in one interview, he was saying that he felt like he was creating most freely when he felt like he was three years old. and that was a time in our lives where we didn't have many boundaries or restrictions and we just kind of did, you know, our creative output was exactly how we wanted it to be and now we potentially have employers or market rules or trends that we need to follow and then those are all ultimately like guardrails that prevent true creative freedom.

19:03Cloe Shasha Brooks: So everything's about balance at the end of the day, but I still try to maintain that freedom as much as possible.

19:09Salehe Bembury: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Salahi. Thank you for being here.

19:18Salehe Bembury: That was Salahi Bembary in conversation with Chloe Shasha Brooks at Play at TED in 2026. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sungmarnival. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.

20:02Salehe Bembury: Thanks for listening.

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