One of our local brands, MONARCHII, which is already almost in their 4th year, approached two of the most prominent street artist in South East Asia, SBTG and Pras The Bandit of the RoyaleFam and came together for a sweet collaboration and produced one hell of beautiful line of custom sneakers. For those of you who don’t know, Mark Ong aka SBTG hails from our neighboring country down south, Singapore and is guilty of producing quite a few kicks that are considered “Holy Grails” to some collectors around the world. He shot to fame after he won NikeTalk! back in 2007 and instantly was revered as one of the best sneaker customizer in the world.
Pras The Bandit, also hailing from Singapore, is the first curated artist to come out of Mark Ong’s SBTG Art Academy. Pras has already done a few collabs with SBTG himself, like the Pras X SBTG “Op Kino”, “Toxic Revenge” and the “Rolling Thunder” wihch are also considered ‘Holy Grail’ material because of it’s design and limited quantity. These sneaks are also very military inspired like his mentor SBTG, but yet still having his own interpretation and signature to his designs.
The first pair from the series is the Nike Dunk Hi which has only 10 pieces produced. The AirMax90 and the AirForce1 has only 2 pieces each model and lastly is a 1 of 1 Air Jordan 6. All models spot a tiger theme, with the red and black tiger camo being most prominently used coupled with some black and yellow tiger stripes offered in velvet being placed at selected parts of the shoe. Also the use of selvedge denim is seen beautifully placed at random spots that accentuate the shoe and its looks. The designs of all 4 models were spearheaded by the creative director of MONARCHII himself, Fooi.
SBTG and Pras The Bandit have been responsible in churning out one of the best custom shoes in the world which many regard as ‘Holy Grails’ and an effort being initiated by one of our own local brands is something worth shouting about. Many shoe collectors and enthusiast have said that the era of custom shoes are over and that it is a dying art, but that’s where they are wrong. Art will always be art. In our opinion, good art will always last through the times. We foresee this line as being the line that pushes the envelope of the sneakers culture locally and in the region, and also becoming one of the ‘Holy Grails’ for some of the sneaker collectors locally, if not internationally.
The pack of custom sneakers will be made available for purchase from the MONARCHII online store at 8 pm tonight, the 1st of July.
