With the limited variety of size 13 shoes available locally, I decided to grab a custom pair from Nike's on-line store for the first time a few months ago. To preserve the majesty of the sweet-ass colour scheme I choose, I took a few photos before I hit the streets with them and started standing in dog turds. (It's how I like to break in a new pair.)
The customisation's a fairly simple process done through a Flash-based interface. You start off by either selecting a pre-set scheme or going with a blank (grey) shoe. Then you can rotate your flash-based shoe around, while you click on the various shoe parts and select their colour from a pop-up menu. There are only a limited number of colours for each part and some parts are tied to the colour of others, but there's plenty of scope for customisation there.
For the shoe I was ordering, part of the design included optional numbers on the tongue and sides. The one on the tongue would be covered up most of the time anyway, so I decided to go with "64" (in honour of the Atari Jaguar, of course). The number on the side, I wasn't so sure about. It could be up to ten digits long, so the choice of number was immediately apparent, but wouldn't it look really dumb there? Well, on the Flash shoe, it looked pretty small and it was grey against a white background, not that noticeable, so...
I totally went for it. However, on arrival a month later, those damn numbers looked black, bold and FUCKING HUGE. I had clearly geeked these shoes up beyond all repair. :D
Despite the possibility of incurring eye rolls from fellow Losties though, the shoes are quite well made and I'm really pleased with how the colour scheme turned out. I would have expected a wide size 13 to be a little wider than these, but overall, I'm pretty happy with them. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go find a pair of extra long boot-cuts.
Some more pics here
