Some workplaces encourage employees to donate blood to charity. But six employees at MSCHF, a quirky Brooklyn-based company known for products like toaster-shaped bath bombs and rubber chicken bongs, offered their blood for a new line of shoes.
“‘Sacrifice’ is just a cool word – it was just the MSCHF team that donated the blood,” said one of MSCHF’s founders, Daniel Greenberg, in an email on Sunday. (When asked who collected the blood, Mr. Greenberg replied, “Uhhhhhh yes, hahah, no medics, we did it ourselves, lol.”)
A drop of blood is mixed with ink that fills an air bubble in the sneaker, a Nike Air Max 97, Mr Greenberg said.
“Actually, not much blood was collected,” he said, adding that “there were about six of us on the team.”
Starting Monday, MSCHF will sell 666 pairs of shoes – each pair costs US $ 1,018 – as a result of a series of “Jesus shoes” that contained holy water.
Mr. Greenberg noted that Nike was “not involved in any way” in the process.
In a statement, Nike said, “We have no relationship with Little Nas X or MSCHF. Nike did not design or publish these shoes and we do not endorse them. “
The Consumer Product Safety Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday on whether there were any concerns or legal issues surrounding the sale of the shoes.
“If we can make people fans of the brand and not the product, we can do whatever we want,” Greenberg told news website Insider last year. “We build what we want. We dont care. “
The “Satan Shoes” are a collaboration between MSCHF and the rapper Lil Nas X after a music video on the devil was released for his song “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)”, in which he spins on Satan’s lap.
In the song, Lil Nas X, who was born Montero Lamar Hill, wrote “gleefully about lust as a gay man,” wrote Jon Pareles, the New York Times’ lead music critic.
Lil Nas X was released in 2019 and the title of the song is an obvious reference to “Call Me by Your Name,” a novel about a secret summer romance between two men that has been turned into a movie.
The shoes have a pentagram-shaped bronze charm and the imprint “Luke 10:18” – a reference to the Bible passage that says “I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning”.
Lil Nas X responded sarcastically to the social media uproar about the shoes, posting a video on YouTube on Sunday titled “Lil Nas X Apologizes for Satan Shoe” – but what appears to be an apology cuts a sexually charged scene from the Music video.
On Thursday, Lil Nas X wrote to 14-year-old Montero on Twitter that the song was about a man I met last summer.
“I know we promised never to come out publicly,” he wrote. “I know we promised to die with this secret, but this will open doors for many other strange people to just exist.”
