PUMPED UP KICKS

How Dominic Ciambrone, aka The Shoe Surgeon, crafts incredible bespoke sneakers for luminaries like LeBron James

- NICOLAS STECHER

“It’s been interesting to see what’s been happening over just the last few years, how high fashion’s taking from streetwear, and streetwear takes from high fashion,” Dominic Ciambro-ne says. “My first experience with luxury sneakers was when I was 22 or 23, and I went to a store in San Francisco called Black Scale which had a collaboration with Android Homme,” he continues, name-checking the early Los Angeles luxury sneaker brand whose $300 price tags raised eyebrows at the time. “As a kid, especially for me, I never thought I could afford Louis Vuitton or any of these other brands. So that was actually my introduction to luxury at an entry point, and really to see fashion in a different light.”

Dominic—better recognized worldwide as custom sneaker artisan The Shoe Surgeon—knows a thing or two about luxury footwear. In fact, one could argue the Santa Rosa, California-raised designer has elevated to the highest echelon of “luxury streetwear”— a once-thought-impossible fashion intersection exploding everywhere from the runways of Paris to the skate shops of Venice Beach.

This seemingly paradoxical fusion could never have occurred when luxury brands exclusively courted old-world money, and streetwear was strictly the domain of grimy New York skate kids and graffiti artists. But now it’s an industry unto itself, claiming a large, youthful slice of the $303.9 billion global luxury market—estimated by management consulting firm Bain & Company to potentially reach $360-$380 billion by 2025.