Custom AF1 Flames, Painted in Glazes From the Sole Up

Flame is the oldest request in painted footwear and the one where the two available approaches produce completely different objects. You can draw flames, as outlined shapes filled with colour, which reads graphic and slightly retro. Or you can glaze them, building ember through orange to a pale flare in transparent layers, which reads as light rather than as shape. The second takes several times as long and is the one worth commissioning.

Infernal Flame is the glazed version. The shoe is black: black leather, black midsole, black laces, so there is nothing bright anywhere except the fire. Flames climb from the sole up across the toe, the mudguard and the quarter, deep red at their outer edges grading through orange to a pale yellow core, with the hottest part of the field sitting low near the midsole where a real flame would be brightest. The swoosh is a solid red, outlined by flame rather than sitting on top of it, and the collar and heel trim pick the same red up.

A glaze is a transparent pass. You lay a thin red, cure it, lay a thinner orange over part of it, cure that, then a yellow over a smaller part again, and the colour you see is all three layers seen through one another rather than three colours sitting side by side. That is why glazed fire has depth and drawn fire does not. It is also why it cannot be rushed: each pass has to be fully dry, and a glaze laid onto a tacky layer lifts the one beneath it and turns the whole area muddy.

Black leather is the other half of the job and it is more work than it looks. A factory-white Air Force 1 taken to a proper black rather than a charcoal takes several passes on its own, before any flame is painted. It also has to be an even black, because the flame sits directly against it and any patchiness in the ground shows up as a shadow behind the fire. Most of the bench time on a pair like this is spent on the part nobody comments on.

The London Burn is the restrained version and it is the one we would suggest to most people. The upper stays white. Smoke and ember are drawn low along the mudguard only, a small flag sits at the heel, and a line of type earns its place near the sole. The fire is kept to where the shoe meets the ground, which is both a compositional decision and a practical one: the mudguard flexes far less than the toe box, so nothing important has to survive the daily crease.

That is the general rule with flame and it is worth stating on its own. Fire painted up over the forefoot will be read through a fold for the rest of the shoe's life. Fire kept below the flex line will not. If you want a pair you will actually wear rather than photograph, ask for the low version.

Tell us how much of the shoe you want dark, and how high you want the fire to climb.