On Saturday 12th May, I headed down to one of the UK’s biggest sneaker festivals Crepe City with the premium streetwear platform The Hoxton Trend to form our new team. As sneaker and streetwear enthusiasts, we only thought it was best to check out and share with you the latest industry grails, speak with sneakerheads from across different cities and test the nation on our new “Fake Spotter” challenge.
For those wondering what Crepe City is (no it’s not a desert city full of delicious crepes), it’s a streetwear and trainer event where snakeheads, re-sellers and brands come together to buy, sell and trade anything from trainers, clothing, accessories and even art pieces related to the industry. Not only that, this is the perfect event for like-minded people to network and enjoy each other’s company.
Normally held at The Old Truman Brewery in London, for the first time ever, Crepe City was held up in Manchester and this only meant one thing… ROAD TRIP! I was joined by Hox, Giles, Aaron and Andrew as we hit the road to take on our long journey from London to Manny. After a long 5 hours of several service station stop offs, snacks, R Kelly debates and wrong turns (a journey which should have taken round 3 and a half hours), we finally arrived at the event a bit later that expected at 3pm.
Non the less, this gave us no time to kill as the team got straight into action. Hox and Aaron went around to the stalls picking out the hottest sneakers from the most vintage styles, such as the classic Hyper Blue OG TN all the way through to one of the hottest shoes on the market, the Off-White x Converse sneaker which dropped worldwide that very day!
To also spice things up a bit, we tested sneakerheads to the “Fake Spotter” challenge. This challenge at at times had me in stiches and even had me questioning whether the fake sneaker was real. Well yeah, you’ve guessed it, the challenge was to approach people and present them with two Air Max 97’s which look quite similar and test their crep game to see whether they can spot a real to a fake.
In one hand I had an Air Max 97 in pure white using an engineered mesh style material and in the other hand I had the Air Max 97 “Summer Scales” sneaker in an ivory colour, which included a synthetic snake skin material. Safe to say, I’m pretty impressed with everyone’s eye as 80% of people guessed the fake! It’s actually crazy how similar fake sneakers are to the real ones, so be very careful when buying from retailers online which don’t sound familiar and analyse the sneaker fully from stitching, air bubble, product codes and materials if you’re buying from re-sellers. If you want to know more about spotting a fake sneaker, let me know and I can do a “How to Spot A Fake Sneaker” blog!
Click here to check out the The “Fake Spotter” challenge and full video coverage!
Check out images below from Crepe City, Manchester 2018. Image credit: @TheHoxtonTrend
