The Tegan and Sara Macbeth Shoes! by Sara and Emy
hello emy. thank you for answering these questions about the "tegan" and "sara" macbeth shoes that are about to be released!
as people may already know, this is not a "tegan and sara" shoe. these are TWO separate pairs of shoes. a popularity contest! why would you do this to us emy? why? what kind of a monster are you?
we were supposed to do this interview in person, but tonight i had a superbowl party and i feel so sick i might need to go to the hospital. the combination of french onion dip-sour cream and onion ruffles chips-frozen french fries-strawberries-six cups of coffee- one large dill pickle- and two beers has brought me to my knees. that's why i asked you to leave my apartment so abruptly. i wanted to cry and rock back and forth clutching my guts.
so! here are ten questions i thought up in my food poisoned delirium.
1. i realize you are hermetic and rarely "collaborate" with other human beings. why do you continue to work so closely with me and tegan on designs for our band (including these two nifty pairs of shoes)?i wish i had been hermetic tonight for the superbowl because then i would have avoided eating a whole bag of chips-almost all the onion dip-20 salami cheese pickle roll ups-baby carrots-strawberries-cheetos - sugar pie and what now feels like 100 heinekens, and i wouldn't be here rocking back and forth clutching my guts either. why football? why do you make me eat everything?
working with you and tegan is more habit than anything. i can't seem to shake you. i thought i would design some good sneakers that i could wear while running far far away from you. just kidding, tegan and sara is my favorite art project!!!! most clients don't really allow you to get so closely involved with every aspect of their visuals. it's so fun to work out every detail. it makes things look so much nicer i think.
2. would you wear this shoe? for real emy.yes i would!!! i love that they are made of denim. i love that the insides of the sara shoe are purple. you know, wearing someone else’s clothing, or clothing that represents a person is a gesture of genuine affection. it's no secret that i love you and tegan more than life itself.
3. would it be terribly embarrassing if at our next "tegan and sara" concert i wore the 'tegan' shoe on my right foot and the 'sara' shoe on my left foot?3b. can i wear these shoes and not look narcissistic?i'm curious as to why you'd want to do that. it reminds me of that story you tell about kriss kross day in junior high. i would avoid wearing a tegan shoe and a sara shoe at the same time. they are like oil and water.
in response to 3b. - you can wear the shoes without looking narcissistic for sure. initials are mysterious like that. besides, i thought the main thing about these shoes was that you and tegan gave me direction based on what YOU wanted from a shoe. at the time that we collaborated on the design tegan was really into surfing and you were crazy for the alphabet. every conversation it was waves and letters, waves and letters.
back when we did our DC shoe, we weren't necessarily thinking about whether or not you'd want to wear the shoe. we just wanted to do something crazy.
so this macbeth shoe is a way for people to get closer to you. it's like - not only is it your brain child, but you also wear your baby and they can too!
4. you have secretly told me that often, clients, including our band, "always pick the wrong" designs. in the case of these shoes, did you feel like we ignored your instincts and picked the "wrong" shoes?4b. if these shoes fail, will you think to yourself, "i told you so"?it is true that from the design options i present for a given project, i am occasionally left feeling that the client has not picked the best idea. differing taste? color blindness? vengeance? who knows what leads them to do it. i did not feel that you picked the wrong shoe designs in this case. this is because the design process went like this:
sara - " i want an S on my shoe"
tegan - " i want a hand drawn wave on my shoe"
so i found a cool old font, stuck an S on your shoe, scribbled a wave stuck it on tegan's and you were both like, "good." and then we went to the arcade.
5. i love shoes, and so do you. in fact, we both have a LOT of kicks in our closets. did you like designing a shoe? was it confusing because there were so many surfaces to consider? would you like to give up life in the city, move to the country, and open up a little shoe shop where you could stitch little booties for newborn babies?i do love sneakers. i envy your sneaker collection. i compare my success to your own by the number of sneakers we each own. currently i'm registered as failure compared to you. but then again i do have some choice kicks that you would have to trade me ten pairs to give up, so don't forget that it's about quality not quantity sara. designing a shoe is tricky business because you can't see what it's really going to look like until the prototype is done. on the other hand, there are only so many elements that you can affect on a given shoe: material, colours, patterns on the insole, etc. so a shoe is not a bottomless pit of potential ideas. now designing the style of the shoe - doing a whole new model, i bet that would be challenging!
in this case though, we were just re-designing a pre-existing macbeth model so it was a piece of cake, and the macbeth people were very nice.
the whole project definitely made me want to become a cobbler and live in the mountains.
6. it’s not a secret, you helped turn "tegan and sara" merchandise into a multi trillion dollar industry. the first cheque i wrote you for your services went towards a pony. will the large dividends from this business venture into shoe designing expand your pony enterprise?it was pretty magical watching your merchandise empire grow, like i was the nanny and it was my little baby made of t-shirts. back in the day i used to set up that elaborate light display and my customized suitcases full of cds and postcards and buttons...we used to sell a reasonable amount of t-shirts every night in the olden days. but the baby grew and grew and now you've had to get it its own house, like some child actor.
thank you to all your fans who must eat those shirts for dinner. where do they all go?
i unfortunately had to sell my pony to pay for food, but i plan to get another one just as soon as i build myself that little mountain home.
7. do you think the "sara" shoes is more of a summer/spring shoe because it’s white denim? where as, tegan’s shoe, being black denim, would be more appropriate for winter and autumn?7b. you and i, like most people in montreal, rarely wear "shoes" during the winter months. except when we go to the bar, in which case we wear high heels with no socks. even if its -30. do you miss wearing sneakers in the winter? is this a bad time to release a shoe!?in my opinion the black/white clothing rule does not apply to shoes.
it is true that i have not worn anything but massive boots since the montreal's first snowfall in november. i miss my sneakers so much.
however, i think that tegan and sara fans everywhere learned through the sale of the DC shoe that supplies are limited and you can't wait for the appropriate shopping season to purchase them or you might miss out. also, with large groups of fans living in california and other warm clients less affected by winter shopping patterns, i think it's safe to say that february is a fine time to release a shoe.
8. tegan told me that her shoe was inspired by the black light aesthetic of her high school bedroom. does this mean if you like tegans shoe, and its darker sleeker look, you are a glass half empty kind of person? does it mean when your mom told you to make your room look a little less "trashy" you protested by removing every single stitch of poster and personal item, leaving four walls and a bed, not unlike a prison cell?yes
9. if you're drawn to the gentle pillowy white denim-ness of the "sara" shoe, inspired by the feathered hair of girls i crushed out on in elementary school, are you the kind of person who still has all of your mix tapes from high school in a playstation 2 box in your storage closet in the basement of your apartment building? does it mean that you can't let go of the past?yes
10. thank you for designing these shoes for/with us. i hope a lot of people buy them. it will be so sad for you if they don't. you would feel like such a failure, and i'll end up feeling bad and buying all of the overstock on line. then one day you'll be down in my storage locker and you'll find all of the boxes and you'll realize what i had to do to save you from feeling like a failure and you'll take all the extra shoes and throw them off the bridge into the saint lawrence river all the while screaming "damn you recession!!!!".you're sweet.
The shoes are available worldwide at the following websites and store locations, with more to come!
North America
- Journeys
- Loserkids.com
- Zappos.com
- Skatepark of Tampa, Tampa FL
- Old School Shoes, Santa Cruz CA
There is also a list of physical US stores here...
macbeth.com/files/teganandsara/stores.html International