Change Clothes

Asio HighsmithAndy Newman Would you buy a used shoe from this man? Asio Highsmith displays his merchandise for the camera, with Suzanne McCaffrey, a trend specialist who happened to be walking by the future home of Mr. Highsmith’s Pedigree Sneaker Gallery (behind the gray-papered window) on Adelphi Street. Asio Highsmith does not want to sell you a pair of shoes. He wants to sell you a lifestyle. He wants to sell you your life. When you walk into his Pedigree Sneaker Gallery, soon to open on Willoughby near Adelphi, wedged between the pet-supply store Who’s Your Doggy and the laid-back BidonVille café, Mr. Highsmith or one of his appointed acolytes will seat you at a computer and administer a 100-item questionnaire about every pair of shoes you have ever owned, your favorite colors, your high school’s colors, your college colors, and significant dates, places and people in your life. From this, he will generate your Lifetime Style Heritage. He will then scour the Internet and his fetishist’s knowledge of sneaker-maker back catalogs and track down your perfect shoe. Or perhaps he will recommend that one of the young artists he plans to retain draw a custom design on a shoe for you. You will pay serious money for this — $600, $700, $800– because, Mr. Highsmith says, he will have written your cellular autobiography in footwear form.

— Singing Your Life With His Shoes - The Local - Fort-Greene Blog - NYTimes.com