After seven years of community building, championing the LGBTQIA+ skate community and wicked video compilations, artist Jeffrey Cheung’s There Skateboards has taken center stage by launching its own SB Dunk Low at this year’s Olympic Games in Paris. Despite the incredible strides the brand has taken, Cheung wants to make one thing clear — There is “just a skate company,” and its team simply wants to share their own vision for it.
There’s chaotic Parisian adventure was one that involved a release party for its Nike SB Dunk Low, the premiere of a new skate video for Nike SB and plenty of other Olympic festivities. In the wake of the successful journey, Cheung caught up with us to share how the partnership with Nike came to life, There’s mission, inclusivity at the Olympic Games and, of course, the SB Dunk Low collaboration that just flew off of shelves worldwide.
You were just in Paris for the release party of your SB Dunk Low. How did it feel to have everything come together for the launch, especially with the Olympics going on?
It was surreal, we were out here with almost the whole team. I was super hyped to share the new video we filmed for the shoe and premiere it at the Centre Pompidou in such an epic way. We only had about 2 weeks to film for it and I think it came out pretty sick. It feels great to be able to celebrate it with everyone.
While it’s been amazing, being here is for sure weird for us. The Olympics are pretty messed up with their trans-exclusionary decisions and other backward policies, but we try to see the positive things — like spotlighting women’s skateboarding. It’s crazy to see how out of touch the Olympics are with the times, especially when it comes to inclusion and fairness. Their rules against trans participation and invasive sex testing are good examples. There Skateboards is a team with a diverse range of identities and I don’t know if us being here really makes any difference, but I hope we can help break down some barriers and show a more inclusive world of skateboarding. I’d like to see more support for queer and non-traditional skate brands and skaters because in mainstream spaces like the Olympics, trans people are often excluded. We’re making little changes at a time, but there’s still a long, long way to go.
“[Nike] actually initially approached me to design the Olympic uniforms for skateboarding.”
How did your partnership with Nike form?
They actually initially approached me to design the Olympic uniforms for skateboarding. It ultimately did not get approved by the IOC, so they suggested doing a shoe together instead.
Do you or the team have any history with the SB Dunk?
I worked previously with adidas on a shoe but never with Nike, so this was my first time doing anything with the SB Dunk. Chandler Burton, one of the pros for There, skates for Nike and he always skates Dunks so he had a lot of input. Shout out to Chandler!
Could you walk through some of the key elements that stand out to you?
You know, this shoe was a happy accident of sorts. Originally, we were thinking just black and green as Chandler loves green, but one of the samples that we got back featured a gray-colored fuzzy suede, and we loved how it looked with the white embroidered artwork. We did a few more rounds of samples with a darker black and realized we preferred the gray option. The gray anthracite suede against the dark green and black is what stands out to me the most. The dubraes and little hand drawn logos were fun to do too.
One of the beauties of working with the SB Dunk Low is that so many sneakerheads are inevitably exposed to the project, and the design seems to have resonated very well with the scene. Are you excited to have a new audience interact with your work?
It’s cool to see all the new people that are now interested in the brand. I just hope they are actually down with us and not just only into the shoe.
How do you communicate There’s mission through your designs and how do the shoes extend that message?
A lot of us are also artists in different ways besides skateboarding, and we like to show that variety through our graphics. The work comes from one of the riders or one of our friends. I also do some of the graphics, especially when I first started the company. Although sometimes the aesthetic can be pretty eclectic, our approach stems from DIY and raw, scrappy hand-drawn artwork. The shoe has artwork from some sketches from my notebook and airbrushed work — a little bit of everything in regards to the different styles of work I create.
The worlds of art and skateboarding overlap in some unique ways. What do the two practices mean to you?
They really do seem to overlap a lot. Many skaters are artists and vice versa. I think they are both great but different ways to express yourself without conforming to any rules. I will usually do one of them until I feel burnt out and then do the other so it keeps things feeling fresh. Although I almost always want to go skateboarding [laughs].
What do you hope people take away from your SB Dunk Low project?
I hope people are into them, which it seems like people are. I think the shoes look cool from a distance and it’s fun to see the details up close. I hope people who wear them feel good in them, want to skate in them and maybe also feel a little fruity too!
Special thanks to Ashley Rehfeld who has been a great help and resource to me and There Skateboards.
