DAVID ALLIO/ICON SPORTSWIRE VIA GETTY IMAGESall there together, except for Will. It got
announced and my dad started crying.”
She smiles.
“And then when he got hurt in that
game, when his Achilles popped, I
remember X pulled me aside at the
arena, while we were all in the locker
room. He was like, ‘We’ve got to figure
out how to make these shoes better.
Just better. Better, better, better.’ That’s
all he kept saying.”
“It wasn’t until, like, 12 or 15 years
later that I found out they were working
on the shoes because of that injury,” Will
says. “The first time that Ana mentioned
it was in passing one day, like, ‘Yeah, the
design looks great and we figured out
how to completely avoid injury and we’re
trying to pick between purple, pink, blue
or green for the first colorway.’ I was
like, Back up, what did you just say?”
“When Will hurt his Achilles tendon in
that first All-Star Game, he totally rup-
tured the ligaments,” X says. “They just
snapped because he had been playing
for far too long in terrible sneakers. So
the idea,” X says while fumbling around
with The Button in his hand, “was to
figure out how to create a sneaker thatwould form to the foot, that would move
in accordance with every single action
that the wearer was taking. Something
that would be a one-to-one fit and
prevent injury. It was supposed to be a
performance basketball silhouette.”
Xavier and Anastasia didn’t ever play
ball. They were part of the first group
of students to attend SKY Academy,
the university that floated above San
Francisco a handful of years back. X
studied design and medicine and Ana
studied programming and technological
development.
“Going to SKY together was every-
thing,” Ana says nostalgically. “Mom
rented us a house right below campus.
We would study individually during the
day and then at night we would work
on The Button. It was every single day,
fighting about something for four hours,
then coming up with a breakthrough that
we would obsess over for four hours. We
pretty much never slept. It was a lot of
laughing and arguing and a lot of yelling
and silence. But we were getting really
far in the project.”
“X is only 11 months older than Ana,so they’ve always done everything
together,” Will says.
He’s wearing the “Wilson” colorway
of The Button 1.0 at his home in Miami
a few weeks before July 1. It’s a version
that was never released, with only 15
pairs in existence. Instead of the lateral
side reading “The Button,” it says “Wil-
son,” with each letter in a different color.
“I just remember that I was home one
day after my injury and X was playing
around with some really loud colors in
his sketchbook, doodling sneakers,” Will
says, nearly 30 years after that moment.
“And Ana was telling him to try this color
and try that color. That’s my first
memory of the shoe.”B
ack at his office in Madrid, X
sighs when we ask him about
the pastels. He’s told that
story so many times over
the past decade. He breezes
through it, mentioning that
he’s always been partial to bright colors
and the relationship they have to glisten-
ing, refracted light. He says he picked up
a few charcoal pastels one day because
he liked the way they looked. He starteddrawing and then he got on a roll. He
went back and spoke to a professor from
SKY about feet and ankles and how they
get injured. Then Ana started working on
the functionality.
“It took a long, long time to figure it
all out, but we looked up one day and all
of a sudden we were done. I stepped on a
button and a sneaker formed around my
foot,” X says, leaning back in his chair.
“I had a pair, Ana had a pair and I sent
a pair to my brother. The 1.0 officially
came out in 2050 but we had prototypes
by the middle of 2048. Will was just
about to be 48 but he was still playing
pick-up so I told him to wear the pair for
a workout.
“You remember that app called
TEALEAVES? It was around for, I’d say,
like, four or five years. It launched in
2047 so it was really popular by the time
Will was in the gym,” X says. “Somebody
uploaded Will working out in a neon
green pair and they just blew up in the
app because it was a sharing platform
that was all about secretive information.
It was for people that wanted to spill the
tea. Turned out to be the best publicity ofall time. It was like, Will Wilson Jr, What
Are You Wearing? It was everywhere.”
“We were some of the first people to
use the Holographic Market,” Ana
remembers. “I thought it was such a
great tool to distribute product through.
And that was our biggest thing. We had
seen our dad and our brother strike out
on rare sneakers all the time and they
were huge figures in basketball. We had
known so many people who always
asked us for pairs of sneakers. Like,
we didn’t have the good stuff, you know?
We wanted to make sure we changed
all of that.”
The Wilsons used the HM to circulate
as many pairs as possible, utilizing its
ability to instantly deliver The Button to
consumers. They had Will as a sales-
man, broadcasting into living rooms
around the world, demonstrating the
technology via the HM. One click, that’s
all it took. Step on a button and get a
perfect pair of sneakers.
The initial launch didn’t have the Cha-
meleon innovation that we now know,
the mode that allows the kicks to blend
into whatever colors the wearer desires.
It only came in six pastel colors back in’50. Pink, green, blue, orange, yellow and
the fan-favorite purple.
X fully expected basketball players
to fall in love with them. What he didn’t
expect is that they would be adopted by
people all around the world for every-
day wear. The availability through the
Holographic Market, the cutting-edge
technology, the fit, the comfort, the med-
ical benefits all proved to be the perfect
storm. It allowed the Wilsons to build an
empire, headquartered in Spain, with a re-
search division on Mars, and to effectively
change the sneaker industry forever.
“We’re not done,” Ana teases mo-
ments before the doors open to the GLO
Center. She’s wearing a neon pink shirt in
celebration of the release. “Show ’em,”
she says to her brother.
He starts walking out of his office.
“Thanks for coming by today,” he says
with a handshake. “Now watch this.”
His 1.0s suddenly change from
chrome silver and neon purple to a
moving graphic upper, displaying a beach
with waves rolling in and trees swaying
in and out of the logo. He smirks.
“They’re not ready.” S+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
ONE CLICK, THAT’S ALL IT TOOK. STEP ON A BUTTON
AND GET A PERFECT PAIR OF SNEAKERS.76 SLAMONLINE.COM