Lil Yachty and I Attended the Dingyun Zhang NYFW Takeover at Crocs SoHo

It was a busy Friday in New York City, deep in the weeds of New York Fashion Week (or NYFW for my fashion girlies) with four events to attend throughout the day. It was a bit hectic trying to zig-zag the city and hit all the stops to see our friends in the biz but we got it done. This is a big week for pop-ups and debuts, so the invites were hot and heavy, but I was most looking forward to the finale of my booked and busy Friday: a high fashion takeover of the Crocs flagship in SoHo by none other than world renowned artist and designer Dingyun Zhang.

After my first two events of the day, I was starving and under a time crunch, but thankfully event #3 canceled and I suddenly had a few hours to kill before I had to be at Crocs. I found a decent parking spot in SoHo and started walking over to the general area of the big Crocs store on Broadway, thinking I’d find a spot to eat and work for a bit before the party.

On the way there, I noticed a whole street shut down for like four blocks with lots of booths and music and an aroma I simply couldn’t ignore. Turns out, I walked right into the annual San Gennaro festival in Little Italy, a perfect way to kill an hour and fill your belly if you’re in the city before the festival wraps up this coming Sunday (Sept. 21). I grabbed a slice of spicy vodka from Prince Street Pizza’s booth and walked the festival, watching people play ring toss and other games trying to win giant stuffed animals.

I was balancing my little plate of pizza on top of my can of Diet Coke in one hand while I tried to capture some #content with my other hand and, of course, lost my balance and splattered the slice directly onto the front of my shirt. How the hell was I supposed to attend this NYFW event and interview a next-level high fashion designer with a giant pizza sauce stain on the front of my shirt that I made infinitely worse trying to clean up with a napkin? I couldn’t, that’s how. So, I walked back to my car and thank Jibbitz Christ I had a black windbreaker in the back I could possibly pass off as an intentional wardrobe piece since it was a little brisk outside.

After adding more time to my meter and walking to the Crocs store while scanning passerby to see if they were looking at my pizza stain (they weren’t), I finally felt like I had successfully avoided lunchtime disaster and was ready for fashion. I walked in the Crocs compound and immediately felt at ease. Crocs just doesn’t take itself too seriously and we love that about them. Sorry to speak for you, but we do collectively love that about Crocs. Aside from their team being super nice and welcoming, the SoHo store is just filled to the brim with whimsy, from the mock subway station with Crocs-ified ads and stickers to a vault filled with $800 Jibbitz that I would instantly lose and couldn’t even think about copping, no matter how sick they looked.

As I walked further, my surroundings transformed from a Crocs store into a chic club, complete with a full bar sporting signature cocktails, a DJ spinning some of New York’s finest, and a giant avant-garde sculpture of a Crocs Diffuser, the molded foam weapon of choice for Chinese designer Dingyun Zhang.

Just beyond the sculpture was Zhang’s installation, filled with tall, sweeping grass and camouflaged mannequins rocking pieces from his latest collection, meant to pair with his new pack of Crocs Diffusers. I had to go back and run my hands through a giant bucket of Spongebob Jibbitz to make sure I was still in the Crocs store. It felt like an old school war film but also somehow futuristic. Full Metal Jacket meets The 5th Element, if that makes sense.

A former designer for Y**zy, Dingyun Zhang has worked with everyone in the fashion world from Marni to Moncler since venturing out to work on his eponymous label. His wild puffers and otherworldly headwear make his creations feel like something from another time and place entirely, which is why his Crocs make so much sense. Zhang has done other footwear collabs, with adidas and Birkenstock, but they all still felt like shoes at the end of the day. His work on the Diffuser silhouette for Crocs feels like it’s alive. Like at any moment, it will start emitting lights and weird noises and take off into the sky.

When I asked Dingyun Zhang how he saw Crocs through the lens of the fashion world, he said, “It’s a timeless design to me, and accessible.”

“Crocs moves beyond comfort. It connects to everyday utility,” Zhang added. “It’s functional and wearable, even with all of the details.”

The Diffuser is a one-of-a-kind silhouette for Crocs, and shows how far the brand is willing to go beyond its comfort clogs foundation to achieve new benchmarks in style and versatility. Based (very) loosely on the brand’s Swiftwater sandals, the Diffuser has taken on a life of its own, going through a complete transforma… well, I’ll let the designer himself speak to it.

“It’s inspired by transformation, adaptability, and sculptures,” said Zhang. “Oh, and cars.”

“I was really into sculptures and this silhouette was a lot of clay work for me,” Zhang continued while molding invisible spheres in the air with his hands that I couldn’t see but just trusted were there in some other dimension Zhang was existing in. “Millimeter by millimeter, I worked with the Crocs team while I was in Shanghai sculpting samples, and we managed to pull it off. It was an exciting journey.”

“We had friends and family come and try on the samples, studying different improvements we could make,” DYZ explained about the design process. “It’s challenging to bring art to products. It took a lot of research and a lot of tests to figure out what’s possible and what’s not possible. Crocs was really supportive of me on that journey, where not a lot of brands would do that. We made like 30 samples [laughs]. Sculpting, 3D printing, then making real wearable ones.”

Zhang and Crocs had dropped two Diffusers previously, in all-white and a sapphire colorway, but this pack felt different. These three colorways had gradients that felt so intentional and unlike anything I had ever seen before on a Croc or anything else.

“The colors come from the Earth,” said Zhang.

“We were experimenting with roasting some metals, and photographing the metal as it slowly changed colors. It turned into a kind of camouflage by the end that we used for the Army Green colorway.”

I had seen the three DIffusers in some press images leading up to the event but seeing them in person blew me away. These weren’t some middle-of-the-mall Crocs—no offense to Crocs, a brand I love. These represent a new frontier for the Denver-based clog-omerate, one where they aren’t held out of the conversation when it comes to high fashion. This silhouette, in these colors, with this designer, styled with these clothes, debuted at this kind of party… belonged.

Or at least that’s what it seemed like Lil Yachty thought. He was there, too.

[All Diffuser sketches and 3D models are property of Crocs, Inc. and we're really thankful they shared them exclusively with Sole Retriever]

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Drew London

Drew oversees content at Sole Retriever and hates writing in the 3rd person soooo I'm going to stop. I've written for countless blogs and magazines, from Complex to XXL and everywhere in between. Spent a long time in LA, running content and working on branded collabs at The Hundreds. Now, I'm back home on the East Coast freezing my ass off. Email me at drew@soleretriever.com with scoops, story ideas, and size 13 heat.