Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star Crater Black

The All Star has its non-negotiable aesthetic cues — the toe cap, the foxing tap and the pin stripe. Remaining true to the look and feel of traditional canvas, getting the height right and ensuring new patches reflect old values are critical to maintaining the shoe’s All Star-ness too. Translating the Space Hippie design ethos to the silhouette required overcoming three key challenges: Applying Crater Foam to a Chuck shape, identifying a viable upper materials and radically rethinking the use of reinforcer materials. More than 100 people collaborated to meet these challenges. Using in-situ design principles, their output included figuring out how Crater Foam, which expands differently than typical footwear foams, could be molded appropriately to meet Chuck specs. Converse also developed unique uppers that employ Morphlon blends, which feature recycled polyester and recycled post-industrial textile waste scraps and lend an emotional pull-through to traditional Chuck uppers. By reconceptualizing components fundamental to the construction of all Chucks, the Chuck Taylor All Star Crater also achieves an additive design language (note the new eyerow) with less material, and created a new lacing system as a byproduct.