“I’m at this place right now, where when it comes to footwear, I’m killing it, respectfully,” Joe Robinson, founder and creative director of Joe Freshgoods told Vogue late last month in Paris. Having a team that’s “culturally tapped in,” he added of his 18 employees, helps cut through a market oversaturated with collaborations. Case in point: Robinson launched his lates collection—inspired by early 2000’s prom culture—by curating an art exhibit coined “A Friend Named Cousin” in Paris’s Marais district.
There, among works by Teoni Hinds, Jewel Ham, Jahlil Nzinga, and Goldie Williams—in addition to a textile work by Robinson—the designer and entrepreneur talked family, delving into art, and his thoughts on the current state of fashion collaborations.
Vogue: You formally launched the collection in Paris alongside your team, but also your family. What was that like?
Joe Robinson: I’m trying to practice a better work-life balance. I think it’s very important to be in my daughter’s life all the time, but she’s 10-years-old, so she’s pre-puberty and thinks I’m the most un-cool person. But she’s creative, so whenever I have moments when I can show her my world, I do.
Tell us about the collection. How did you land on the baby blue and red colorways?
Somebody sent me a DM, a stranger, and they were like, ‘yo, this the laziest shit ever, bro—red and blue shoes, really?’ But the reason why I chose those colors initially was because back in the day—and I’m 37—there was a point in time, like the early 2000s, where baby blue was everywhere in my hood. So I was going back and forth with this guy, which I shouldn’t have done, but I was trying to show him the importance of baby blue to my community back in the day. And then red is just sexy. I love red lipstick, I love red fast cars.