Introducing Archive Dna
It’s obvious that communities and relationships are easier to build nowadays in the digital age through social media, but they’re even better when they’re solidified in person. Similar to way back when in the time of forums -before a simple click of a hashtag- with the element of surprise of walking into a store not knowing what they’ve got in stock.
In that respect, there used to be more more interaction with the stores, the people that ran and visited them and the products. Those physical spaces created community hubs for like-minds to hang, shoot the breeze over kicks, music, and anything and everything. It’s what we still try to do till this day. Patta got love for all!
As many of you may already know, before the sneaker accounts with major footwear brands, the Patta team travelled around the world visiting obscure sneaker stores and buying up quantities that weren’t available to the Dutch public. This was a period of time when countries and cities had regional exclusives and releases, so shoes were sought after for their individualistic styles.
Visiting sneaker stores dotted everywhere forged those relationships. This is how Patta’s long-standing relationship with Archive DNA came about. Magdi Fernandes, founder of Archive DNA, previously ran one of London’s hottest sneaker spots, Slammin’ Kicks.
When Edson and Gee ran errands in London back in 2006, they walked into Slammin’ Kicks and bought about 150 pairs of sneakers to send back to Amsterdam as Patta had just recently opened. This connected the dots between London and Amsterdam, and formed a long-standing relationship. The rest is history!
Archive DNA is a sneaker community platform serving up knowledge and passion for the larger community initially founded through Instagram, now evolved to a website with an online vintage store, in-depth editorials and more. If you were lucky to be around Amsterdam back in September 2019, we hosted Archive DNA’s pop-up store. Taking on board the ethos of, “Show love, drop knowledge” (Shout out to Gwarizm. Rest in power. And sharing is caring after all.), Archive DNA has adopted the role of being a space to — thanks to today's digital connectivity — share the back stories of some of the most obscure and rarest shoes ever made, as well as current releases.
On that note, Archive DNA will be sharing details and insight to some of those very shoes with us on the Patta blog. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, if you haven’t done so already, follow Archive DNA over here.
