There’s a consistency that runs through Ronnie Fieg’s work, everything feels tethered to an essence. It’s not just in what he makes, but in how it is seen. Shaping one of the most recognisable footwear catalogues in contemporary streetwear, his perspective has never stood still. What has changed is the depth of that lens: sharpened by experience, informed by a deeper and broader archive, and now filtered through something more personal, time, family, and the responsibility of looking back in order to help move forward.
In this conversation, Fieg reflects on how tastes evolve but never reset, how his early instincts remain embedded even as a new level of sophistication grows, and how becoming a father reshaped the way he sees colour, play, and creativity. Looking across 15 years of work, he unpacks the value of the archive not as nostalgia, but as a structure and why his upcoming book wasn’t just for the Kith customer but for himself. A living timeline that continues to inform what comes next. At its core, it’s a story about purpose, consistency, and the long game of building something that still feels exciting a year, a decade, and eventually a lifetime later.
What would you say is a shift, from the early days to now? What’s really helped inform your taste level?
I think as you get older, your taste, your initial sense of fashion, starts even before you’re a teenager, in what you gravitate towards. A lot of that sticks with you. But as you grow older, your taste level hopefully evolves and becomes more sophisticated. Your eye starts to gravitate towards different things. It’s funny, I’ve seen that happen, but I’ve also seen it cycle, almost like a trend. Your taste changes, then comes back, changes again, then comes back again. You never really stop loving the things you loved when you were younger.
But I think what changed me the most was becoming a dad. What you gravitate towards as a dad, especially with the energy from your kids and seeing what they love at five years old, how colorful everything is to them, it just brings fun back into your life in a way that makes you think differently. So my taste has constantly evolved. And then sometimes I’ll go back into the archive and look at work that’s now almost 20 years old, from around 2007, and I have a love-hate relationship with some of it. But I’ll look at it and think, actually, I like that now.
What are a few examples of that? Is there anything that comes to mind when you look at the early days compared to now? Things you always want to bring back?
Very often, when I go back to the references and look at the timeline and the product we worked on, because a lot of what I work on now is in footwear, I’m still thinking about that timeline. Making sure the archive is the context I’m working from when I think about what I’m going to do in the future, so that it ages well. That has become a big part of the thought process.
It actually kicked in around year two or three. I didn’t know how successful any of this was going to be in the beginning. But when we got to that point, I thought, I should start thinking about what this is going to look like holistically, further down the line. And that thought process just stays with you. It’s definitely been a big part of how I approach projects ever since.
What makes a project worth doing nowadays? When you say YES versus NO. What defines that decision?
It needs to move the needle in terms of how I feel. I need to emotionally feel like it is worth it to me. The process of getting to the finish line on a project is a year, minimum. So from the very beginning, you need to feel like a year later you’re going to be just as excited about it. You hear designers say all the time — I worked on this product and by the time it came out, I was already over it, onto the next thing. And honestly, that does happen. But with footwear, and with the volume of projects we work on, it has to be fun. I know that word gets beaten to death, by the time you’re 30 you’ve basically retired it, but it’s true. If you’re not having fun while doing it, what’s the point? By the third round of samples, it’s got to still be exciting. So from the beginning, it needs to feel purposeful. Otherwise it’s not worth doing.
“Purposeful” is an interesting word. What gives purpose to a project for you personally?
There are different types of projects we work on. Even something like releasing colorways of a New Balance, which is probably the simplest form of what we do. A lot of people don’t understand that, because they think everything I do or Kith does needs to be groundbreaking, some completely novel product. But novelty doesn’t have to dictate purpose. If I feel like there’s a void in a brand’s assortment, and I feel like there’s a reason to fill it, then I’ll go make that. Sometimes the product is subtle. But as long as the purpose behind it is genuine and authentic, it’s worth doing.
The categories we work across are vast. What Kith does today, the spectrum of who we cater to, means our footwear consumer base is in the hundreds of thousands of people.
Beyond purpose, what is it that unites all the different categories of footwear when it comes to your point of view? The Brown shoes, the black shoes, performance, lifestyle, and then all the different subcategories within those categories.
The consistency in the lens. That’s the through line, the evolution of where we’ve gotten. Across everything we work on, the eye has been consistent throughout. With a lot of brands, you have creative directors stepping in and out, and that game of musical chairs creates inconsistency in the product and how it evolves. What’s special about this brand (15 years of footwear) is that you can see the natural progression. And that’s rare. One person working on it throughout. A consistent eye.
Why was it important to approach the book as an index, rather than focusing on the best stuff, something more subjective?
Honestly, this part is important. When we moved into our second office, the downstairs space was about 30,000 square feet. Before we even started building it out, I spent nearly eight months just designing the layout, so I had a lot of time to reflect on what we’d already done. During that period, the idea for the book really started to take shape. I knew we wanted to create something for the 15th anniversary, but at that point, I still hadn’t figured out exactly what it was going to be.
So I used the empty space to lay everything out, every shoe we’d ever produced or sampled, across the entire floor. It ended up being close to 2,000 pairs. Jordan Bloom, our archivist, arranged them all in chronological order. I didn’t go down while it was happening, I waited until it was completely finished. Then I walked it, this full 15-year timeline laid out in front of me for the first time. And that’s when it clicked. It had to be a book. It needed to live somewhere permanent, something I could always come back to and experience in that same way.
Honestly, the book started as something I needed for myself. That’s usually how this brand works. If there’s something I want, I go and make it. Then I get to share it with everyone else. But it always starts there.
How do you look at the archive now? It’s strange to talk about the archive for things being created as recently as a few weeks ago. But when you looked at it from that bird’s eye view, what was your first thought?
The initial reaction to 15 years of work, I don’t want to spoil what people are going to see in the book, but the reaction I had when I saw it all together was breathtaking. I really waited. It took months to lay everything out in chronological order, and I didn’t go down until it was completely finished. I’d never seen all of my work in one place before.
I live within the context of the archive in general, I always have. I used to have an archive downstairs that held three years’ worth of product, apparel, and footwear. It got so big that I don’t even keep it here anymore. But I’d still walk in sometimes, pick something up that came out two years ago, and feel the delta between that and what we’re making today. Even just two years. That’s the only real physical evidence I have of progression, and that’s what makes me proud of what I do. Everyone needs to feel accomplished to be happy in what they do, I’m no different.
That’s what this book is going to do, for me and for a lot of people in the company who’ve been here a long time. It’s a reminder of how far we’ve come. And it’s not necessarily about the product getting better, it’s that every one of those releases was a milestone. For the people who follow the brand, those pieces are tied to memories, where they were in their own lives at that moment.
It’s fun, because someone who’s been on this journey for three years gets to see everything that came before them. And someone who’s been here for all 15 gets to see it from the very beginning. Almost like a memory attached to a piece of footwear.
A lot of people’s first entry into the brand was probably through a footwear piece, that’s been the case more often than not. So it brings them back. It’s nostalgic. We’re at the 15-year mark now. Think about it, a 25-year-old who first started following the brand ten years ago was 15. A 32-year-old who was 17 when we launched. For those people, this isn’t just a book about shoes. It’s a timeline of their own lives.
So seeing all the different types of footwear I’ve worked on over 15 years laid out together — it was a reminder that I don’t think anyone, or any brand, has had that kind of spectrum of product with a consistent point of view across that many categories.
What’s the one thing you hope people take away when they see the book and the full body of work?
How far passion can take you, that’s it. I started in a stockroom. I was collecting sneakers from a young age, and that hobby, that passion, eventually turned into a brand. It turned into what we are today. In a way, it’s a timeline of people’s own lives. They can look back and reference it and say, these are the moments, these are the highlights. Because what do we really connect to? We connect to products, to music, to sports, to fashion, to physical things we buy and wear. For me, it’s clothes, sneakers, even smell, that’s what brings me back. And I’m still collecting every single day.
You’re a massive collector, which must have informed a lot of the evolution over the past 15 years. I imagine you were in a different headspace as a collector at different milestones along the way?
For sure. And still am. What I collect today is different, I only go after really old footwear now. Deadstock. New pairs that are really old, still hunting every day. But what I’m looking for today isn’t what I was looking for before. There are pieces I’ve been chasing for years that I’ll eventually get because of nostalgia. The collection is massive, but I do it entirely for myself. I’ve never shown it to anyone. Never brought anyone over to see it. It’s for me to go back in time and feel the way I felt when those shoes first came out.
Was there anything that really surprised you when you looked at everything at once? Anything that took you by surprise, or patterns you saw reemerge seeing it all next to each other?
It was a reminder that I feel like we’re the only ones doing what we do. Because we work across so many different types of footwear. It’s really not about athletic footwear for me, I’m a footwear guy. I grew up in brown shoes and boots. The first fifteen years of my career were in brown shoes and boots, even though I always loved athletic footwear on the side. Merging those two worlds, that was the whole point from day one.
What’s the one thing you hope people take away when they see the book and the full body of work?
How far passion can take you, that’s it. I started in a stockroom. I was collecting sneakers from a young age, and that hobby, that passion, eventually turned into a brand. It turned into what we are today. In a way, it’s a timeline of people’s own lives. They can look back and reference it and say, these are the moments, these are the highlights. Because what do we really connect to? We connect to products, to music, to sports, to fashion, to physical things we buy and wear. For me, it’s clothes, sneakers, even smell, that’s what brings me back. And I’m still collecting every single day.
