Dime is the premier basketball magazine, covering the NBA, NCAA, High School, Playground and International basketball - as well as sneakers, fashion and music.
Issue link: http://dimemagazine.epubxp.com/i/109153
Mache, who earned a baseball scholarship out of high school, saw his competitive streak kick in. He wanted to outdo everybody, which he did, winning a Sole Collector contest with some customized Air Force 1s for Rasheed Wallace. ���Sheed, predictably, loved them. Mache made fans with his detailed sneaker portraits. At the time, his work was art-based. He had a grandmother who was an art teacher, and he grew up drawing cartoons and sneakers. But after a while, with the introduction of NikeiD, the demand for customs dropped. Mache went on a twoand-a-half year hiatus, and, as he puts it, ���took a big boy job and wore a suit to work.��� When he ���nally reappeared in December of 2011 and dropped his customized Nerf LeBron 9s (the 12th of 12 pairs sold for over $4,000 on eBay), it felt like he���d never left. Now, it���s almost like a holiday for sneaker lovers when Mache drops a new design on Instagram. And while it was his competitiveness that helped get him painting shoes again, it���s Mache���s love of the work that keeps him going. ���I always say this but my favorite one is the one I���m currently working on because at the end of the day, I���m always doing something that I like,��� he says. ���When I ���rst started and did the Nerfs, I thought that was the dopest thing ever. But now when someone asks me to do a Nerf, I want to shoot myself.��� Mache doesn���t love this generation���s ���sheep��� mentality, and feels most fans are too consumed with hype and re-selling. Yet he still enjoys advising young artists, often telling them to start customizing with beaters instead of LeBrons. He also helps fans embrace their creativity. ���NikeiD, you���re limited by color options and where you can place it,��� he says. ���With me, you can do whatever the Hell you want.��� For now, the kid who copped his ���rst pair of Jordans in 1990, and always worked at sneakers spots to get a discount, admits he doubts whether he could work for a boss again. But knowing the inconsistency of the custom sneaker game, he���s looking into every opportunity. Perhaps a large sneaker company will get sick of competing and instead offer him a job. ���At the end of the day, I just wanna enjoy what I do,��� Mache says. ���If I���m doing eight million of the same thing all day, then it���s a job. If I was doing that, then I would go back to wearing a suit.��� You can check out more of Mache���s work at www.machecustoms.com or follow him on Twitter and Instagram: @mache275 25