In his 2014 track “Trap Back,” hip-hop artist 2 Chainz put a little-known footwear brand on the map when he dropped the verse “You know I’m rocking Buscemis, and I’m as raw as sashimi.” At a time when Gucci, Versace and Louis Vuitton reigned as hip-hop’s MVPs, an exorbitantly priced $890 pair of kicks known as the Buscemi 100mm were suddenly the music world’s most wanted.
“I don’t sit around thinking, ‘I wish my name was in a song,’ ” says founder Jon Buscemi, 41, at his Hollywood office, where candles sculpted in the shape of his head line the shelves. “But when it happens, it’s cool.”
Raised on New York’s Long Island, where he began customizing clothes as a kid during the rise of ’90s hip-hop fashion, Buscemi went on to pursue a career in finance, working as a stockbroker on Wall Street. When the market crashed, however, his first love became his second career.
“I had a ‘What the f— am I doing with my life?’ moment,” recalls Buscemi, who is married and has a 7-year-old son named Benito (but goes by Franchise). “I realized I needed to get myself into the fashion industry by any means necessary.” Through a friend who was connected to the skateboard-clothing market, he says, he was “able to wiggle my way into it.”
In the two years since launching the brand, an elite clientele that includes Swizz Beatz, Sean “Diddy” Combs and Justin Bieber has stocked up on the Buscemi-designed sneakers, which are priced steeply thanks to small-batch runs and the materials used to make them (like Italian calf leather, rare Japanese textiles, 18K gold padlocks). “I didn’t pioneer anything,” says Buscemi of his gilded touches. “This is just my take. When Louboutin and Louis Vuitton elevated sneakers, it was great to see that it could be done.”
An ad campaign starring Quincy Jones, as well as the low supply/high demand framework also ensure celebrity interest. “We’re not doing any magic tricks,” says Buscemi, who resembles both a bouncer and Lex Luthor. “We might make 50 pairs of a certain color, and when they’re gone they’re gone — we won’t make them again.” Still, he insists, there won’t be a shortage of new styles for fans (and he recently debuted collections for women and children).
“If the brand were a novelist, it would be like John Grisham,” says Buscemi. “I’ll be writing a lot more books. Or rather, a lot more shoes.”
-Keith Staskiewicz