It’s safe to say my college rotation wasn’t the best. Nor was it the worst by any means. Oh and when I say College I mean ‘high school’, the two years of education before University. Just in case we have any American Readers. Having only fully started getting into sneakers the summer before starting college, there was a lot of learning to do. I remember wearing my Vans Old Skools for a large portion of the first year. They were on the brink of being too small but because of the simple colourway, they were easy to wear.

I then moved finally gained the courage to wear my Reebok x Palace’s. I managed to get the last UK12 that summer off of END clothing. An extremely lucky find. These got a lot of complements throughout their use. A great shoe to this day. I really put the miles on them and eventually ended up having to retire them after X-Fest in summer 2016. A good 3 year run to the point where the Triferg logo started fading off the back of the heel.

Then onto second year. I found a love for Reebok after the Palaces gave me a good run and many a compliment. I found a cheap pair of black Ventilators off Buttery Store, a site which has now closed, I think they were £40 quid. They fit half a size big and upon reflection, was not the best Reebok shoe I could have chosen out of their line-up. Somehow, I ended up missing the Workouts, Revenges and even the Club C, a novice mistake. I think I was fond of the little window at the bottom of the shoe which let you see the Hexalite midsole technology. I did end up picking up another Reebok Ventilator after this stupidly. The Reebok x Major DC shoes, which had a detailed pink 3M toe box with an iced out sole that had a blossom tree underneath it. I was a huge fan of the blossom tree under foot however I haven’t worn them to this day. They have literally sat at the bottom of my cupboard since 2014. The Ventilator did end up going on to get some love with Kendrick Lamar doing his first collaboration project on that silhouette. A few years prior to that you had shoe stores like SNS and Hanon doing their own renditions through collaborations. So I guess my love for the model in hindsight was justified.

I actually ended up swapping these for the week with my mate at college. He was the only other UK12 I knew and had picked up a pair of Nike Trainerendors back when they had ACG on the tongue and not Nike SB. By that point he had mashed up his pair as well, so it was a relatively fair trade. I came out on top as the Nikes were a lot comfier than the Hexalite technology. Not to mention the mesh toe box on the Reeboks was pretty chewed up by that point. Come to think of it, I’m not sure why he did swap, probably because he thought he fancied some change in his life. It’s the little things in life as they say.

I managed to find a cheap pair of Adidas ZX Flux’s for sale on their website for something ridiculous, like £28. It was a UK12.5 and was made up of a single Tree-camo upper. This was back when adidas had a good thing going with their ZX line. I remember there being a lot of buzz for the iridescent pairs.

Adidas at the time were also doing at ‘create your own’ ZX section on their website where people could upload a photo for their upper. I remember people trying to get away with jokes designs and some pretty non-PG photos. Clearly, they’d found a loophole in the system. Kind of like how Barclays did those custom Bank cards. All I used to see on The Basement were people with Bape Camo cards, I was almost convinced to create one myself. Having been to a Flux Pavillion concert Shepards Bush a few years prior to having these, I did knickname them the Flux Pavillion’s … I don’t know what I was thinking. On a side note, what actually happened to the guy?

I have literally had my ZX Flux’s up on my Depop account since the summer of 2016 and no one has bought them. That’s a total of 6 years. They’re even up for £18 all in now and they still haven’t budged. I suppose that’s more of an indication on peoples view of how these aged.

The last edition to my college rotation was a pair of black Eric Koston 2’s with a gum bottom. These got equally as mashed as the Ventilators in the end and probably got more use than any shoes on the list. If I were to rank these, I would definitely place these as a close second to the Reebok x Palace’s. At the time the Koston Air Max’s were everywhere. I even had two of my mates arguing about “who got theirs first”. They had both got the Black pair with the white mid-sole colourway, the only difference was one has a mesh upper and the other was canvas. I remember them looking to me to ask which pair had come out first to which I just laughed. I couldn’t be bothered with the silly argument, sitting there feeling superior in my Koston 2’s. Whilst I don’t think the silhouette aged too well, I still think it’s a Nike shoe that garners respect.

Overall, my rotation definitely was not the best out there. It consisted mostly of General release shoes that had hit the sale racks. I knew of the Jordan 11s gamma blues that released in 2013 but at the time, shoes that price were just way too expensive for me. I did manage to get a pair of Columbia 11s though in my second year of college, but they never got worn. I wasn’t brave enough at the time and my jeans weren’t baggy enough to sit on them correctly, so they’d end up looking like boats. I did amass a decent collection but as far as the ones that got worn, well those you already know about. Looking back, my shoe knowledge and rotation has vastly improved but it’s all part of the experience. You just have to look back and smile!