Over the last year the Sneaker Community has gone crazy for customs. We’re not just talking about your painted sneakers, or additional fabric sneakers, but dip dyed sneakers! We have seen many artists attempt to dye their sneakers various colours and @lorenz.og has taken this to the next level by perfecting gradients of colour. However Sneakerhead’s are now looking to use household products to dye their kicks, with @jakepolino going as far as dying a pair with Koolaid!
Alongside the attempt at dying sneakers bright and colourful, we also have seen an increase in ageing of sneakers. The aged effect consists of yellowing features on a sneaker, that would suggest a vintage pair of sneakers. But rather than people waiting 20 years for this to happen, they’re buying brand new sneakers and doing it in a matter of 24hrs. One particular way to achieve this, that has been extremely common on Instagram, is dying the sneakers with coffee!
Now as a Sneaker Customisation business, of course we had to try this! We grabbed a fresh pair of Air Force 1s, boiled the kettle multiple times, stewed the coffee and left them.. We returned 3hrs later to a completely melted pair of sneakers (oops!) Now this didn’t mean we were going to give up as obviously we had literally cooked our sneakers, which meant it was just way too hot. So we grabbed another fresh pair and off we went with round 2.
And this is how to correctly achieve the Coffee Air Force 1.
STEP 1: Remove the laces of your AF1 and acetone the whole shoe – you can use nail varnish remover to achieve this, however ensure the bottle doesn’t state that it is ‘acetone free.’
STEP 2: Fill a large container with boiling water (we did add a small amount of cold water to cool it down slightly to ensure we didn’t achieve a barbecued pair this time.)
STEP 3: Add the coffee – the more powdered the coffee, the better the result!
STEP 4: Place your sneakers into the container, and ensure the whole sneaker is submersed under water.
STEP 5: Leave for 2 hours.
STEP 6: Remove your sneakers from the container and scrub to death! Get all of that coffee out of the sneaker insoles and heel.
STEP 7: Allow to dry, and voila, you have coffee dyed sneakers!
We chose to accessorise these with some of our Gold Lace Tags!