Jeff Staple on Near-Death Moments, Big Risks and One Sneaker That Changed Everything

0:06Jeff Staple:Street wear icon, brand whisperer, former latchkey kid with a racing car bed. Today I'm joined by Jeff Staple, the designer behind Nike's Pigeon Dunk. It was the shoe that sparked a riot and helped kick sneaker culture right into the mainstream. We talk about what it feels like to dig your own snow grave right on top of a mountain. Yes, that actually happened. why a near-death moment can change how you take risks, and how Jeff turned Brooks from mum's running shoe, not that there's anything wrong with that, into a Paris Fashion Week moment. Along the way, he shares the habits that keep him grounded, how to reframe jealousy as social media plods along, and why sleep is now non-negotiable.

0:50Jeff Staple:We also geek out on Bruce Lee, cul-de-sac childhoods, and what really makes a brand cool. It's smart, it's funny and it's surprisingly human. A reminder that this too shall pass and sometimes the boldest move that we can ever make is just to wave everyone off and take the shot.

1:12Jeff Staple:This season of the Creative Boom podcast is proudly sponsored by James Cropper, the last mill standing in Britain for premium coloured paper. Its new colour source range puts designers first, giving you direct access to 50 stunning shades in a range of weights and textures straight from the mill. Incredible colour crafted in the Lake District and delivered straight to your door. Discover the paper that brings your ideas to life via paperandpackaging.jamescropper.com

1:48Jeff Staple:Jeff, it is so lovely to have you with us on the Creative Boone podcast. Thank you. Thank you for having me. There's a warm Manchester welcome for you. I wish I was in Manchester. Well, it's always sunny in Manchester. There's actually a, there's a beam of light coming, so I'm just trying to avoid this. Oh, it's moving now. I could actually center up. Okay, cool. It's your morning and my afternoon. You know, I'm bringing the energy. I'm pretending that I've just got up and I'm bouncing around the room. one more coffee maybe yeah maybe five o 'clock yeah let's do it let's do it it's quite a nostalgic moment I'm I'm gonna just lay it down I was born in 1978 so the 90s for me were you know really pivotal lovely decade for me they felt really warm and whenever I look back I always see them those years as kind of a happy time you know what do you think when you look back on the 90s Everybody seems to be loving them at the moment.

2:49Yeah, it's having a retro moment for sure. I was born, you said 78?

2:55Jeff Staple:Yeah, yeah. I was born three years before you. I was born in 75. And I actually just saw this post and I actually shared it about, it was basically saying people born between 1960 and 1985 are the most special generation that mankind will ever see from this point forward. because it's the only generation that grew up without the internet and then inherited the internet, but is still savvy enough to adapt to Web3, blockchain, AI, VR, and all that stuff. Whereas the next generation didn't have the internet, the generation before that can't really grasp new tech. So we're like that special golden child.

3:35And I'd like to believe that. I'm sure many other generations would disagree with their own perspectives, but I like that stance. So I don't know, you asked about the 90s. I mean, to me, what draws the most heartfelt nostalgia is the 80s, actually. And I guess maybe that's because I'm three years before you. So the 80s to me was like really the cheesiness of it is what I love, you know, like. But, you know, both both areas were really good. I love the idea that decades kind of cycle and become like cool again and that they always like, you know, trends, fashion, music, whatever it is, kind of like recycle.

4:08And I love that.

4:10Jeff Staple:Yeah, you're spot on about the 80s. they felt very romanticized, didn't they? All the movies and the music. I get goosebumps when I, you know, hear any kind of synthesizers from that era. Yeah, exactly. Do you have a favorite memory from that time? If you can think back that far. I can. I mean, it was, you know, it was... That's British humor, by the way. Five. I was five, ten years old. I mean, that's the childhood innocence era, you know, where nothing really mattered except your friends that you're going to play with after school that day you know that was like the biggest milestone of your day and that's a really beautiful naive thought in fact i have like right over here behind my monitor i have like pictures of me from when i was a kid because my therapist told me to do that my therapist told me to put pictures of little jeff when he was a kid so that you know know that all of the things that you're doing and all the success you have it's like it's for that little kid you know oh that's so cute yeah I'm looking at little little Jeff there you know it was it was a great era I love that we're already getting into the differences between British people and Americans because we just sweep it under the carpet and hope for the best whereas you actually deal with your feelings look at it yeah stick it in front of your face and look at it yeah yeah I think it's it's something the counselors or therapists, as you call them, they always look up, don't they?

5:36Jeff Staple:They get you to talk to your inner child. What was little, I mean, has anyone ever asked you this question? What was little Jeff like? Little Jeff didn't have like a whole lot of family nucleus network. So I'm an only child. I was, um, the term in America is called a latchkey kid. Do you have that term in the UK? No, no, I've not heard of it. You know what a latchkey is? Like when you close the door and then you lock that chain. Yes. There's like the bolt and then there's that chain. That's called the latch key. Yes. A latch key kid is a term where it means that both parents were working. And so they would leave the house with the kid alone at home and they would be like, OK, put the latch on now so that nobody can break into the house and we're just going to leave you home alone for the next eight hours.

6:29Jeff Staple:Wow. And we'll come back at night. And don't open the door for anyone until we come back. That's a latchkey kid. So I was a latchkey kid. And so and I had no siblings. So my childhood was quite lonely. And, you know, I had to really kind of figure out how to amuse myself. But also, you know, it's tough doing it alone because you don't even have like, somebody, you know, of course, nobody to play with and all the fun things. But I also think there's a lot of advantage to having somebody like, beat you up and make fun of you to like, there was no interaction, I had to make up all the good, all the bad, all the inspiring, all the non inspiring, right?

7:12I had to like fabricate everything. And I will say that in a kind of sink or swim mentality. If you don't sort of create a world for yourself in that latchkey kid environment of being an only child, you know, you either become extremely imaginative or you become extremely depressed. And I guess I became very, very imaginative. And I dove into like comic books and anime and cartoons and superheroes and stuff like that and sports, you know, but you know, this is pre-internet, right? So we talked about that earlier. this is in the 80s so I'm like looking at newspapers and magazines and stuff like that and like ripping out pages from the mag and sticking them up on the wall and everything so that's how I sort of like triggered my imagination and I guess you could say that if it wasn't for that I might not be this sort of you know in the career that I'm in today maybe

8:04Jeff Staple:yeah because you had to fend for yourself I guess you learned to be yeah you know look after yourself Yeah. And I remember when I got a little bit older, like I might have been like 12 or 13. And, you know, this is like years now of just being a Slashkey kid and not really having friends. Finally, like my dad had a talk with me and he was like, you need to make some friends. You need to go out and like, and it's funny, I just I took that command like like a robot, like how you would prompt AI. I was just like, OK, let's go make fun. Let's go figure out how to make friends. And then I made some friends and I had a small network of like, you know, five or six friends.

8:40And it was awesome to take that instruction and sort of get some human interaction as well.

8:46Jeff Staple:Maybe you were like the Goonies. Yeah. I mean, we had some fun out in like the driveways. It was all about I lived in New Jersey. New Jersey is very suburban. So it was just about like whose driveway are you going to that day? And then are we playing basketball or baseball or football or hockey or whatever, you know? And then when the sun set, it was time to go home and then like do your homework and get dinner. That was life in New Jersey. We were both cul-de-sac kids, Jeff. Oh, yeah. I was a cul-de-sac. Yeah, we had a cul-de-sac. Yeah, same. It was great. Did you know that? Well, no, I did not.

9:22Jeff Staple:I just assumed that you lived in a cul-de-sac like I did. And it was great because you were safe and you could play out for hours and hours and hours until your dad came and stood outside and put his hands on his hips, right? Yeah. Well, cul-de-sac, is that the round thing? Is that what you call it too? It's closed off. It's safe. People would come in and everybody would be, oh, who's this in the car if it wasn't somebody that lived there? Right. Exactly. Yes. I had that too. Maybe it was that foundation. And seeing your parents both work very, very hard, I presume. that kind of work ethic and being on your own and then having this sort of very safe environment probably made you into a person that could take risks uh yeah i am a very risk averse person i oh really you're risk averse i was gonna say the opposite what does risk averse mean that means you avoid risks oh no what's so how do you say i take risk embracing is that what it's called?

10:18Jeff Staple:You're just a risk taker. A risk taker. Okay. Risk averse versus thank you, English teacher. Okay. I am a risk taker. I can't say like, I'm not a daredevil. Like I wouldn't say I love taking risks. Like I'm not base jumping or like zip lining. But when faced with a, with a debate or a challenge, I will tend to not go with the super safe choice. I'll go, you know if there's risk and then there's possible reward i'll take the risk for sure did it stem from that that's a great question maybe i you know where it stems from actually um we could we could get into this if you want but i had a couple of like near-death experiences like later on in life yeah and i think going through what have you been up to what have you been doing jeff it was uh yeah i went through two very distinct near-death experiences and that I think is what made me more even more of a risk taker because I realized then that like tomorrow is not promised so you might as well just go for it.

11:27Jeff Staple:Can you talk about those moments or are they very private to you? No I can't. I'll let you decide do you want the there's two one was very very quick and the other one was very very long which one do you want to start with? Let's start with the long one. Okay. The long one was I'm an avid snowboarder, like hardcore snowboarder. Like I'll do helicopter snowboarding. And like we went to one trip was in Chile to the Andes Mountains, which is the second highest mountain range in the world behind the Himalayas and Everest. So we went to a mountain that was 19 ,000 foot elevation. And, you know, as a reference, Mount Everest is 23 ,000 feet.

12:06So it's up there. and I was snowboarding with eight of my friends and then I got lost. It was a what it's called a whiteout storm where basically a blizzard comes in on the mountain and then you can't see up down left or right. You're just in a room of pure water.

12:25Jeff Staple:Snowboarder. Snowboarder. Oh cool. Okay. Yeah. It was a whiteout situation and I was sort of I got lost from the crew and then I got to a very essentially a cliff i rode to a cliff that was 19 000 feet up you know and then realized okay have to stop here and then take my board off the powder also was like waist high powder so you know as a snowboarder you know once you stop in powder you just sink down right so i had to and it's like quicksand you're just like like drowning in this mud of snow essentially you know so like it's very very um even talking about it like makes me asphyxiate a little bit because it's very like suffocating like you're you like you know you're stuck you can't move and then now I have to somehow take my board off buried three feet below and then like strap it onto my back and then start hiking and so I was stuck out there for six hours by myself like in a Sahara desert of snow and if I if I didn't if I didn't get out of the situation by sunset I would have likely died overnight you know from hypothermia or dehydration or you know something that's freezing cold too um so it's just like a lot of uh lonely man walking through a white desert essentially began hallucinating no but you you I think you're laughing because you're a snowboarder so you understand this situation well.

13:58But yeah, I started, you know, hallucinating because of dehydration. Oh, you know what I did? That was a stupid move. I started, I had a water bottle with like a small water bottle like this with half water left. And then I, I drank the whole thing. Of course, I finished it. And then I started putting snow into it and then like shaking it to get more liquid. But I, I then after further research, that's not a good idea. Like you can't, that's like being stuck in the ocean and then just drinking the water in the ocean it's like highly salinated water that's dehydrating you even further so i was doing that yeah hallucinating seeing crazy i would see rock formations turn into people like i was really like losing my mind and then like i dug a six foot grave for myself and i laid in it like just done the whole accepted yeah i just accepted i'm not getting out of this like there's no you know there's no cell service this is like way up high you know so like how is anyone gonna find me in this this is like they're good like i'm gonna be found next summer when the snow thaws and there's just this guy in snowboarding gear on the mountain they'll just be a pile of gorgeous clothes yeah just i'm specific yeah sorry um i shouldn't be laughing you poor thing yeah but uh so right at like 5 30 p.m like as the sun set I miraculously got rescued.

15:22It actually turned out to be like, if I'm on this mountain, it was another mountain where a guy saw that I was in a place that I shouldn't have been. He had the wherewithal to call the rescue team at this other mountain. And I don't even know who that guy is anymore. Then at like 530, I hear snowmobiles, but I think I'm hallucinating still. but then it was real and I was incredibly like rescued it was like magical and then it's funny when I read I reunited with my crew they didn't even know I was missing because the crew split into two so like one half of the crew thought I was with the other and that crew thought I was with the other two so they weren't even looking for me and that really changed my life I thought

16:07Jeff Staple:the shorter near-death experience is when they found you they all nearly killed you because they were so worried about you. No, no. So that was a very harrowing, important experience for my life. And I'm very grateful for it, to be honest. I'm very grateful to have experienced a near-death situation like that in that way that is not like fast. You know, like my other near-death experience is I was in Japan riding a bike and I got hit by a truck head-on. I head-on collisioned into a truck and went into the windshield of the truck. So that's a very opposite near-death experience because it happens in the blink of an eye.

16:46And you're just like, thank God. And most people's near-death experiences are like that. Like I survived a plane crash or like a car accident or something, right? But to sit with a near-death experience for like six hours and go through all the emotions of like anger, frustration, regret, like just living with it for six hours is like tortured. I mean, I think that's how they torture terrorists. Like, they make you think you're going to die for days and days and days to, like, drive you crazy, you know?

17:17Jeff Staple:So what was the first thing you did? What was the first thing you did after you got rescued? Did you have a beer? No, they had to check me, so I had to go to the hospital and everything. And what I did, actually, the next day, I immediately went back snowboarding. because I knew that like I didn't want it to turn into some traumatizing phobia, you know. That's why. Yeah, I just went back on the horse right away. But when I got back to New York and I remember vividly sitting back at my desk at work, you know, emails, inbox, voicemail messages unread. And it just everything got put into very clear perspective of what is important and what is static and just noise you know what I mean so yeah I'm very very grateful that I went through that I I've low-key kept wanting to like I should start a business where I recreate near-death experiences for people like how do I get them and maybe that's like people what people do when they jump out of a plane or or you know go ziplining or you know bungee jumping maybe they want to get a taste of what it feels like to like almost die but um I think it's different when you pay for the admission ticket to do it versus when it's like you know forced on forced upon you yeah gosh can you just imagine i think it just feels good to feel alive and did you when you'd gone through that experience and you were back at your desk had you changed as a person as well was there a sort of moment where jeff prior to the event was maybe not as confident maybe not as sure of himself maybe cared too much about what other people thought and then just nap what why am I bothering was there a kind of defining change in the way you felt about yourself in the world I think I think every creative tends to overanalyze and over critique themselves that's a natural behavior that we have so I was definitely that person you know a worrywart a micromanager you know had a lot of what's that word?

19:19Imposter syndrome. You know, am I good enough for this? And afterwards it was just like, excuse my language, but like, fuck it. I'm alive. I'm here. Like accept it, you know? And I want to retain that as this happened when I was probably, this was like 25 years ago now. And so I want to, I want to retain that nugget of like clarity, you know, and the world as you and I know, loves to inflict static and diversion onto you, right? And cloud your mind with that. But I always want to try to remember myself on that mountain. I do bring myself back to that moment, especially in times of stress, whether it's from business or from personal.

20:05I'm like, Jeff, you were on that mountain, never forget that you were on that mountain that you dug your own grave like all of this is all of this will be fine and there's that famous saying like this too shall pass like this it's all good

20:19Jeff Staple:this will pass it's such a powerful silver lining when you go through something difficult i went through a horrendous back injury last year and it completely put me out for the whole year and from that i went through a very similar experience it's just so liberating yeah you just you just let all of that stuff go and you're right you have to keep remembering you have to keep going back otherwise you just fall back fall back so easily you mentioned the back injury like if you have sometimes you ever get like food poisoning or stomach ache and it just like kills you for like a day or two and then you come out of it and that day you're just like so relieved and so thankful and grateful that you don't have that stomach bug anymore but then that friday night you're probably eating nachos and hot dogs all over again like and all the stuff you shouldn't exactly yeah we're we're not the smartest in that way no we're not and this is why i'm thinking gosh when am i gonna forget but i think like you it's just really staying with me so hopefully i can remember that you know my own mountain moment maybe maybe that's your you know next entrepreneurial thing jeff's mountain retreat but you know it's it's funny you you mentioned you know when you were a kid and you you were sort of finding friends is the kind of move when you were a kid move into like the the love of street art and culture was that to find a sense of belonging in a way because it's such a great culture yeah i didn't i actually didn't find the love of street culture until college um so as a child it was really about sports and i would say comics like you know cartoons was the two things and that's a really great mix for me because on the sports side you have pure skill and athleticism and i do believe that design is somewhat of an athletic sport in the sense that, I'm trying to say this politely, there are good people, there are phenoms, there are great designers, and then there's not good people, and they can go to school for decades, and they just won't be good.

22:39I hate to say that because I'm supposed to say, no, keep going at it and you'll get good. Keep going at it and you'll get decent. yeah it is a skill set where you know no matter how many free throws you spend shooting in the gym you won't be Michael Jordan like you won't be LeBron James you know like I'm sorry so I think design is very similar in that way and that's why I love sports and then with sports there was also like this kind of obviously sneakers played a huge part in sports so that love of sneakers came from that. And just swag, like overall, you know, if you imagine like Allen Iverson or Michael Jordan or Bo Jackson or Andre Agassi or John McEnroe, like these people had swagger, you know, in how they wore their clothes and fashion and spoke and everything.

23:25So I adapted that. And then on the comics cartoon side, it was the artistic side, right? Like how good people are at drawing and storytelling was also a big part. So if you if you break those things down to its core of storytelling, artistic expression, swag, and then skill. That was like the tenets of my life as, you know, an eight to 17 year old. And so that was, that was the baseline for me. But from what you're asking about street fashion, streetwear, street culture, or sneaker culture as a sort of thing that we know today, that didn't happen until like 1997 when I left New Jersey and I went to NYU, New York University.

24:08And I think being in New York City in the mid-90s, and because my parents also worked in New York City, so I would go to New York City throughout the 80s as well. That era of New York is an incredible, incredible time. It's just like, you know, there's plenty of movies that you can watch about like what New York looked like. And it really did look like that. So when you add that element of like raw New York City energy into the tenants that I mentioned, that is what I think like sort of sparked my brain yeah you went to college didn't you and

24:40Jeff Staple:looked around at all the other kids and thought oh shit I better dress like these cool kids yeah that's what I would have been like I'd have been oh gosh look I'm gonna have to make an effort I was kind of like the one that I would always want to stray from the from the flock in a sense you know like if everybody was wearing this I would want to stop wearing it and then I would you know in in high school I would get ridiculed a lot because of the way I was dressed I would get bullied. And I distinctly remember getting into one physical fight altercation because of the way I dressed, you know, it ended up turning into a fight.

25:14Yeah. So I was, uh, I was martyring myself for fashion early. Um, but that turned out to be a better, it turned out to be advantageous later on because then it turned into from like, on the one hand being weird as a kid, as you get a little bit older in college, it becomes like individualism and self-expression, you know? So it's funny how I always find throughout, there's a repeating theme in my life where like, I do the same thing, but on one day people call me weird or crazy or stupid, or I don't get you. And then somewhere along the line, a light switches where it's like, oh no, you're a genius.

25:55What you're doing is amazing. But the whole time I was just doing the same thing, you know? So it's I think that's a lesson to a lot of young people. Just because people surrounding you don't really get what you're doing does not mean you're doing the wrong thing at all.

26:09Jeff Staple:Exactly. He wants to conform anyway. Conform is okay sometimes in certain situations, and it's to each his own. Some people, maybe are actually not some people, 98 % of the human population does want to conform. Yeah, they want to belong. Yeah, it's normal. I don't think being an individual or individualistic is for everybody. It's a lonely road.

26:40Jeff Staple:This season of the Creative Boom podcast is brought to you by James Cropper, a British company with global impact. From their Lake District home, they now supply designers in over 50 countries, leading the way in colour, innovation and sustainability. Their goal, carbon neutrality and a journey to net zero. Explore their new color source range, 50 designer shades made for a better future at paperandpackaging.jamescropper.com. Can you remember your first sneakers? The one that changed my life was the Air Jordan 3. Before the Air Jordan 3, I didn't really understand. This is 1985, so I was 10 years old.

27:24I didn't understand how shoes were made. I thought shoes came out of like a sausage maker, like completely formed, like they come out of a machine and just like, here's your shoe, right? And then when the Air Jordan 3 came out, it really, it triggered something in my brain where I was like, wait, this is a totally different thing. Who made this? Who designed this? Like who conceived of this? Who put this together? Whereas if you think about every other shoe before the Air Jordan three, it was like the Converse Chuck Taylor, which is like the OG sneaker. Every shoe after the Converse Chuck Taylor was a derivative of the Chuck Taylor.

27:58Like it, you know, you add a thing here, change the color there, but essentially all shoes look like the Chuck Taylor for many decades until the Air Jordan three. And it was like, Oh my God, what is this? It looks like a fighter jet and like all these different things are going on. And so that one was really life-changing for me. And the other thing that happened with that is when I wore those to school, I remember I was in the sixth grade. I saw everyone's neck get snapped.

28:23Jeff Staple:This is a sneakerhead expression where you snap necks. It basically means like someone looks at you and they say, yeah, they go like this or like their neck falls down. And I made a whole class of necks snapped because of the scooter. I was like, wow, this is a powerful sensation. Like I want to keep going. So every week I'm trying to make their neck snaps, you know. and I quickly became the sneaker guy. But again, in that high school, people didn't wear, like they wore one shoe for the whole year, the whole school year. And if you ruin the shoes and you made your mom buy you a new pair, you would get in trouble for that.

29:00So this idea of like flexing on sneakers and wearing different sneakers to match her outfits was non-existent in that, in the mid 80s.