Talking Simpsons - An Interview With The Simpsons X Vans Shoe Designers

Episode Date: August 9, 2020

A special surprise podcast today, it's our interview with Aven Helford and Diandre Fuentes, the designers who worked on the new line of Simpsons-style shoes just released by Vans (which, full disclosure, Vans sent us a couple of pairs)! They tell us how the shoes were designed, notes they got from Matt Groening, and ideas they wish made the cut! And if you enjoy this, be sure to check out our previous interviews all on Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons!!!

with assassins oh you betcha you know they got the velcro straps a water pump in the tongue built-in pedometer reflective sidewalls and little vanity license plates ahoy everybody and welcome to another Talking Simpsons interview. I am one of your hosts for this one, Bob Mackie, and I'm mad about shoe, frankly. Well, Bob, I hope you like my NYPD shoe sketch, because it's pretty much the same thing. I love it, and today... Hey, I'm Henry Gilbert, yes. We're talking all about shoes, specifically the new Vans line of Simpsons shoes and other gear.

And today we are talking to Avin Helford and DeAndre Fuentes, who are both the designers behind the new line of Vans Simpsons apparel and footwear. Very cool and now on sale. Yes, yeah. And you'll find links to where you can get it in the description. And it was really cool to speak to Avin and Dee about this. And we just talked to them for about 10 minutes about the new line, their inspiration, and other ideas that they had that didn't make the cut. And full disclosure, we were bought and sold

by the Vans company. We did get a free pair of shoes for this. Yes, yes, yeah. But they also do, I mean, they do look kind of cool. And I will always take free things. Yes, yeah, if you want to send it, know that you can but uh but yeah it was it was fun to talk to these designers about their shoes i i do really like the uh the mr plow ones are pretty cool looking but uh but yeah so if you're if you've seen those shoes around or interested to hear about how they were designed

listen to our chat with DeAndre and Avin. Okay, so hey, welcome guys, De and Avin. I guess I wanted to start with asking, you know, as fans of The Simpsons, like what's your history like growing up with The Simpsons? Oh, my history so I think as a visual person I was first attracted to the Simpsons through just the amazing color and vibrance and shape and line and then the humor obviously but I think Avon is more of a dedicated fan so i'm gonna let him speak on his journey with the simpsons yes totally so yeah i was super super stoked to be able to be part of this collaboration as soon as it was brought up i was so excited um i'm trying to think i i think i started watching it

in 99 um i was trying to think of the very first episode I saw. I started skating around then started skateboarding around 98, 99. And I think my dad showed me the Bart the Daredevil episode because he knew I'd connect with that one. And I don't know if it was to try to be a precautionary tale or what it was, but I just instantly fell in love with it. And I just started watching every week. I think I pretty much immediately got whatever sort of box set I could and just caught up as quickly as I could and then just continued watching each week. I think for a birthday gift, I got the poster with all of the characters on it. And at that time, it was much more minimal.

And as we were working on this collaboration, I saw that they had released a new one that had expanded the universe by so many characters. And was really really crazy to see and it's super super cool so yeah definitely have always loved the show and been super connected with it the same as d the humor the relatability and just kind of the whole family aspect and the whole atmosphere and environment that they've created has been amazing. Yeah. I didn't even consider the connection of like, you know, Bart with his skateboarding to Van shoes, which are, you know, a skater shoe. That's it makes a lot of sense now I think about it. So how did both of you approach the designs for these shoes in terms of choosing which

characters to feature and what to reference in the show? Totally. feature and what to reference in the show totally so we really wanted to celebrate just the iconic history of the show and just this the pop culture phenomenon that it's become um and just really uplift all of those relationships and that super in-depth entire family and and really the entire relationship of springfield um and all of its characters and just, again, the iconic nature of what's been created there. So there were a lot of different things that come into the concepts. Let's see, we really wanted to uplift those characters and the relationships again. So we focused in, we wanted to make a shoe for so many different characters,

but unfortunately that would be impossible. No space for a Hans Mollman shoe. No. I think that might have been thrown out there. An orthopedic shoe, maybe. Yeah, that would have been amazing. Just being able to go through the history, it was really, really cool that we were able to use

the 1987 Tracy Ullman short illustrations. So we have those shoes that kind of compare the 2020 illustrations and those characteristics to the original 1987 characters. So that was really, really special. And then kind of building off of that and just creating all of the different relationships with Marge and her sisters, Patty and Salma, with Homer and everybody from the bar, Bart and Lisa for president just was such an amazing one. That was the East Shoe.

We all kind of just played around with our own ideas and presented them to the rest of the group and just kind of went from there. We were able to hide some Easter eggs in some of the shoes. So I don't know how in-depth I want to go into that because I know the whole point of an Easter egg is for the people to find them themselves. But just trying to really encapsulate the rich

culture that the simpsons has created and just going through as much of their history as possible really well yeah the you know that the marge and her sisters one i really like the the use of like you know it's uh of different types of fabric in there. Like the hair on Patty and Selma, it stands out from the rest of it. It's great. Yeah, there's like such a, I feel working with all of our collaborations in the past, there's such limited opportunity

to really capture humor in a shoe. But I think with how iconic the humor is to the show, this is the perfect it was the perfect shoe to just go for it. Normally say like the leg hair on a character. That's something that perhaps consumers would stray away from. But I think the the fan that hopefully the Simpsons fan would be like, that's amazing. I mean, that would that would be the hope. So I think the fan hopefully the Simpsons fan would be like that's amazing I mean that would be the hope so I think that was like one of the my favorite shoes to ever work on just

because we get to look at it through the lens of humor and then pushing people to like pick up something that might make them uncomfortable or giggle yeah that's the hope and I have noticed that fanny packs are part of this line is that a call back to the 90s or a fanny packs are part of this line is that a call back to uh the 90s or a fanny packs come back and i'm just not aware i think a little bit of

both is it safe to wear a fanny pack again i i have been so i hope so okay uh they seem pretty useful yeah i i think it's and having lisa's smiling face on it makes it like even friendlier i'm glad we've taken back the fanny pack. It is very useful. I mean, a Batman kind of has one, right? I guess that is what his utility belt is. Utility fanny pack. It's four-man function.

Can't go wrong. And another of my favorites is the Mr. Plow one. Not just you kind of have the kind of like fringe or furriness of the of homer's jacket is kind of represented on the top but also even the flyer with with the klondike five is is so great i love that totally and that's actually on one of our kind of weatherized shoe builds so that one's good for the snow and just again creating that full story kind of combining the shoe and the character and can you talk about any ideas that didn't make the cut anything you uh tried to make happen but didn't i'm just there's so many uh things that you have on this on the gallery i'm looking at right now

i'm just wondering like was there something that didn't quite make it that almost did i have a story well like even mentioned um there were so many characters that we wanted to incorporate it incorporate into the collection but just you know had limited uh design count but so the women's perspective as you could see is uh margin her sisters and lisa but uh we wanted to maybe rope in the other characters um the other male characters with a Valentine's Day play that didn't get picked up. So the I choo choo choose you and all of the the Valentine's. We wanted to like put all of like Milhouse and everyone in like little lockets but as like a women's play but that was something that I was hoping for but it you know, we'll just hold it in our

hearts. But I'm sure even even, Avin has the deep cuts. So he has a bunch as well. It's not quite a deep cut on this one, but I really wanted, we really wanted to try to do a crusty and sideshow Bob kind of conflict shoe that we thought would have been super, super amazing. But just in the end, having to focus it all down to a, how many shoes?

Oh, just really having to focus it on down to a how many shoes um oh just really having to focus it on down was a very very difficult choice and another one i really do like is the el barto one like that's such a great like early early show reference to like bart bart hasn't done el barto in so long but seeing the uh like all the spray paint style on it is is such a cool thing too i love that and and the shirt that goes with it in the set also looks really neat. Thank you. Yeah, we wanted to try to just make it look like he had just taken the shoe, thrown up his piece on it, just crosses from the rubber onto the side of the shoe and everything.

And it was just such a cool reference that so many episodes just see in the corner of some random wall and it just kind of tied everything together so nicely. And definitely encapsulated it kind of bart's character as well yeah i am seeing a lot of very early uh simpsons stuff from season one earlier so we talked about the allman show we talked about albarto and even odd the auto shirt i'm looking at has like a season one auto quote that he said only once but it's uh it's very evocative of who Otto is. Definitely. Love that shirt so much. Did you guys have much interaction

with the Simpsons creative team on this and their thoughts on it? Did you hear much? We really were kind of in communication and we'd pitch ideas to them, see what was working, see what wasn't working, what we could do,

what we couldn't do, and just making sure that everything went really smooth. And we definitely were able to communicate with them, get what was working, see what wasn't working, what we could do, what we couldn't do, and just making sure that everything went really smooth. And we definitely were able to communicate with them, get so much insight and learn things that we had no idea about. So it was definitely a really cool collaborative process. Yeah. And everything went to Matt for final review. We didn't get to interact with him one-on-one, but he had absolutely the final say in everything so cool he wrote one of the best notes that we ever got was he he wrote on our cads on our um our illustration sheets and on the bouvier one he said funny and i was like that's high praise indeed that's great yeah i was curious you know in the in the world of the simpsons I was trying to think of like any

other time they did a joke about a specific shoe in the show and it's kind of other than like uh my first thought was Bart's giant orthopedic shoes but those those are not very attractive I suppose but the did you guys consider the assassins the crazy you know Air Jordan style shoes Homer had in one in one episode we may or may not have gone for that one yeah yeah i was also wondering if you would ever try to recreate shoes you saw on the show i mean the characters don't really have iconic shoes maybe bart does he's got the little like uh kind of like uh chuck taylor's a bit but they all have very odd oddly shaped shoes they're like hooves so i don't know how that would play out if you actually wore them there was um there's the one in the uh the pro

skate line that's the chukka that was definitely a reference to his shoes with the medial or the the inside kind of circle we put his little skull and cross the bark skull and crossbones on there so we definitely tried to reference that but um with most of the stuff we really wanted to kind of get in as much kind of storytelling as possible okay so yeah and and also yeah i love that you know i i i i wish that crusty and bob one does sound so cool but i do really like the itchy and scratchy one that you guys can even you know reference the not even just the characters but the shows within the show that's that's really great too thank you yeah we we really wanted to put that crusty seal of approval on there as well we just thought that tied the whole thing together

perfectly it's perfect uh you know that's not that brand doesn't inspire a lot of confidence i know at the beginning of every one of your episodes you have the crusty's hardly approval i love it it might be the first quality crusty product one that won't burn you in any way when were you guys uh brought in on this uh to to work on it i am curious like uh like when when did this all begin for you guys when was that actually i can pull up a date on one of my so we work pretty far out in footwear. I think we started working on this at the beginning of 2019. Oh, wow. Is that right? Or the end of 2018.

So it's like Ava and I were chatting about this before jumping on this call. And we sometimes forget what shoes look like when they get released. Because it's like two years in the future. You know, our sense of time is very warped in the footwear world, but yeah, it's been, it's been a while and it's great to see them come to fruition and hear all of the feedback and hear what you're all excited about. No, and that, that button up too. I really love the, with the prints of all the character faces on it. Like there's,

that's, uh, was it always intended? Like, this isn't just going to be shoes. We're going to expand beyond and, and, and shirts and all the other stuff. Yeah,

totally. Yeah. We, with the, with the apparel side, we always kind of work hand in hand and be sure to build out into just the most, um,

impactful collection possible. So definitely those were, they were included from the beginning. Well, thank, well, thank you guys so much for your time. I mean, do you want to we usually do include some

plugs other than just the shoes. Do you guys have Twitters you want to send people to or anything like that? I don't. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. The full collection, I think the slideshow is on the Vans Instagram. I personally don't have a Twitter, but it was great to scroll through the product shoot yesterday.

And yeah, everyone did a great job. But that's my little plug. Shout out to the team who made it come to life. And shout out to both of you for having us and asking us great questions. Appreciate it. Oh, sure. Thanks for your time. They look great. I can't wait to check them out in person. Yeah, same here. Thank you so much.

Thanks to the team and definitely check it out online when it comes out. Yeah, thanks so much for having us. It's been super awesome. Thank you. How much, how much, how much? Well, you know, they're not giving them away. But sometimes you've just got to spoil yourself. Yeah.