ARTHUR BERQUET

Arthur Berquet built the first two HiFi Lovers pairs: the McIntosh on a Nike Dunk Low, then the Yamaha on an Onitsuka Tiger. He works in Paris.

I met him at Creapole, where I was teaching and he was a student. What struck me was his approach — going at an object rather than decorating it. When I was looking for someone for the first pair, I didn’t have to think about it for long. He was starting out; I gave him a paid commission, like any other commission. The issue that followed carries the word 継承 — keishō, transmission — on its cover. I didn’t make the connection at the time.

Paint, sew, rebuild

Arthur can paint a shoe and he can rebuild one. He paints, with aerosol and with a brush. He sews, on a cylinder-arm machine. And he strips a pair down completely to put it back together differently — leather, textile, panels cut flat and re-lasted.

That range is what matters. Most customisers can do one of those three things and fit the project to their technique. He picks the technique to fit the project: the McIntosh is entirely painted because that was the right answer, not because it was the only one he had.

He documents his work in his own series, Behind the Custom, where each pair is shown mid-build. The same instinct as ours: show the workshop, not only the result.

Before us

Before us, Arthur had already built pairs for content creators with very large followings — Inoxtag, Michou, GMK — and a Dunk SB Low for the NBA Paris Game 2024, drawing on Daniel Arsham’s work for the Cleveland Cavaliers’ visual identity. He also works on apparel.

What I asked him for was the opposite of those commissions: not a pair made to explode on a screen, but a pair made to be looked at closely, in a listening room, by people who can tell a good amplifier chassis when they see one. He understood immediately.

@arthurbrqt — Paris.