What was once an unlikely connection has transformed into a first-of-its-kind creative collaboration in the fashion industry.
YouTuber Marques Brownlee and shoe company Atoms have teamed up to launch the Sneaker 251 — marking one of the first collaborations between a YouTuber and a shoe designer — according to Fast Company.
The outlet suggests that such a partnership may signal opportunities for more content creators to find success through product collaborations, which have traditionally been the territory of sports figures as well as creators in music, film, and TV.
The partnership with Atoms came after Brownlee bought a mask from the shoe company during the pandemic.
“We reached out to him and said, ‘We are fans of you, and we love the way you explain products. We would love to see if there is a world where we can work together to design a sneaker,’” Atoms Co-founder and CEO Sidra Qasim, said according to the outlet.
The Sneaker 251 is based on the length of Brownlee’s first YouTube video (2:51), which was the inception of his career, the outlet details.
As previously told by AfroTech, his journey of accumulating nearly 17 million followers on YouTube started from using his saved-up allowance to buy a laptop to make videos. The YouTuber’s channel consists of technology and product reviews.
In addition to the significant “251” number, the high-top shoe features his signature colors of red and black and his actual signature. The matchup combined Brownlee’s desire for a high-top design along with Atoms desire for it to still be a comfortable, “everyday” shoe. It’s the genuine collaborative effort that inspired Brownlee to want to help in creating the shoe.
“To be perfectly honest, in other conversations with other potential shoe collabs, there was not a lot of flexibility for actual input on the shoe,” Brownlee shared. “[With Atoms], it became very clear very quickly that this is a new thing for both of us, and we could actually learn together and make something completely new and awesome.”
The Sneaker 251 officially dropped on April 25 and will be sold in a limited edition release for four weeks.