For the last five years, Connor Seltz has built his sneaker and fashion customizing company, Ceeze, into one of the most exciting contemporary bespoke footwear brands. With a love of storytelling, sneakers, and inspired by New York, Connor’s work, and Ceeze, is all about being authentic with the materials, the design, and the cultural context of everything he creates. Amid the global pandemic, we caught up with Connor to talk about his work, giving back to Mount Sinai hospital, and dreams of a future, super exclusive Gucci collab for this installment of That’s 5.
The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What influences you?
I can say footwear, of course, but I think it’s New York City. I grew up outside the city for the better part of 15 years before I moved here, and there’s just so much to see and to do and to experience here. Whether it’s small things or drastic experiences that form memories, relationships, and friendships, they’re all an element of what I do and how I think.
I think one of the biggest influences that New York has had on me is teaching me to be resilient. You hear “no” a thousand times before you get one “yes.” Having the discipline to train yourself to get through that mentally is something New York did a great job helping me to do.
We’re in the middle of a once in a lifetime event. What is your experience in the city right now, going through everything related to COVID-19?
We ended up leaving the last week of March before anything hit, and it was surreal. We’re at the corner of 18th and 1st, so the morgue trucks at Bellevue are six blocks north of us, the field hospital at Mount Sinai is two blocks west from us. So when we launched our sneaker masks, selecting Mount Sinai to receive 80% of the proceeds just made sense. It’s the least we can do for the first responders.
What’s the most overrated?
This is going to sound weird coming from me, but I think collaborations are overrated. I feel like it’s kind of lost its way in the last 18 months. You see this vast array of brands coming together, including Jordan and Dior, adidas and Prada, and, hell, it’ll be Burberry and Puma next. There’s so much hype that the elements behind the products are lost. The storytelling is missing. But I think Rhude did a great job with Puma, and many others continue to knock it out of the park.
What’s the most underrated?
I think the most underrated thing in the business is relationships and friendships. This is a lesson that I was very blessed to learn three or four years ago. Building friendships in the industry across companies and brands and having people who are willing to give their honest opinion on your work and ideas is hard to come by. Having people offer their true insight and opinion are things that you don’t see, especially having creatives give an honest opinion is hard, much harder than you think. Just being able to have access to that is something that I think a lot of people don’t take advantage of. Relationships are not something you can buy.
What are you excited about right now?
Being outside right now is what’s most exciting. I have a friend who got me into running, and I can do a nice 7 or 10-mile run in the middle of the street, and there are no cars. That’s one of those little things that keep me going. From a brand standpoint, I think I’m most excited now about storytelling. So this is contradictory to what I said earlier, but if you’ve done a collaboration right, there’s a lot of fun to it, and you can do a lot of dynamic things. We did a collab on an all-organic HU NMD with organic hemp vegetable leather, recycled EVA foam, and a handcrafted outsole. If the Hender Scheme is the Ferrari of custom shoes, then I think this is definitely the Porsche Cayenne Turbo. So I’m super excited about that.
What’s next for you?
I think what’s next for us is building even bigger things. Before life as we knew it came to a halt, we had met with Puma in Boston. There’s a lot of opportunities to design, and I think that footwear is always going to be what’s in the core of our skeleton. It’s going to be our go-to. We know footwear. Everyone on our team has at least 300 pairs of shoes; We have a degenerate habit. I think what’s next for us is just storytelling on a much bigger and more prolific level. I’d love to become the Quickstrike king and do things that are only 500 to a thousand units. The dream is to build some of the industry’s most coveted shoes with close friends, shedding light on the small details we love!
Bonus question: What would be your dream creation or project?
That’s not a fair question to ask. I think the ultimate activation and concept that I’ve tinkered with for forever and a day would be to partner with Gucci. I don’t want to discredit or take away from anything that Dapper Dan has done because that dude is literally the Michael Jordan of bespoke attire. I would love to partner with Gucci to do something original. Something limited in New York, with some of their most bougie materials and textures and develop a footwear atelier where, whether it’s closed or for their top spenders, seven or eight design pieces on a level that they have never imagined.
