Meet the Guy Who Made the Custom Yeezy Boosts That Kim Kardashian Said Were Fake

We interviewed the guy who made the custom black Yeezy Boosts that Kim Kardashian said were fake.

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Complex Original

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Ben Baller has a flair for the dramatic, especially when it comes to sneakers. The Los Angeles-based jeweler and NikeTalk legend disrupted Instagram late Wednesday night when he posted a pair of black adidas Yeezy 750 Boosts. Up to that point, only a Photoshopped image of an all-black pair had been seen, and chatter quickly began that this was a first look at the black Yeezys that Kanye West had promised during a recent interview on The Breakfast Club.

Speculation quickly arose if Baller's pair was legit, and Kanye's wife, Kim Kardashian, even got involved and left a comment on the picture saying, "These don't come in black. They are fakes." Her response got Ben to dive into the conversation and explain the true story behind the sneakers that he posted: They were customs done by Instagram user @d_preme and completely legit.

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It turns out that the man behind the custom job is Donovan Cortese, a 20-year-old living in Westchester County, N.Y., who is a personal friend of Baller. It also turns out that he's not a customizer by trade, he just likes sneakers. "Customizing isn't something I take too seriously," Cortese says. "I'm just a collector, and I've been at it since 2007 when the "Aqua" [Air Jordan] VIIIs came out. I used to restore shoes back in the day."

The idea for the black Yeezys — a size 10 that was dyed with Fiebing's suede leather dye — came about through a talk that Baller and Cortese had, and they hashed out the concept. "He contacted me and we spoke about it and came up with the idea. We were like, 'Hey, let’s just run with it and see what happens,'" Cortese says. "I did the shoe and took pictures, just to show him what it looked like."



[BEN BALLER] CONTACTED ME AND WE SPOKE ABOUT IT AND CAME UP WITH THE IDEA.


The sneakers posted Wednesday night, however, weren't in Baller's possession at the time that the picture went viral on the Internet. They were still on the East Coast at Cortese's house. "I finished the pair last night [Wednesday]. I sent him the picture, and he posted it showing the sneakers in my hand," Cortese says. "The shoe was supposed to go out tomorrow, but the weather is restricting me right now. They'll get sent out this weekend and over-nighted to him."

To much surprise, Cortese's work wasn't contracted by Baller. He decided to do it as good deed for his friend. "The Yeezys were mine, and me and Ben are the same size," Cortese says. "I made them free of charge, and they were a present because [Ben] was just getting out of the hospital."

It might seem unthinkable that Cortese would give away a pair of Yeezy Boosts, with their high resale prices and limited availability. But if anyone was ready to give away the sneakers, it was him. While others are still trying to get their hands on a single pair, Cortese had a few to spare. "I wound up getting 8 pairs on release during All-Star Weekend," he says. "I won the raffle at Kith, and the rest were from adidas' app. I picked up two from Champs, one from adidas, and the rest were from Foot Locker."

It's unreal that such a selfless, albeit stunt-worthy, act could cause so much discord on the Internet, but that's exactly what Cortese and Baller did the other night. And if that was their real goal from the start, then it's clear the mission was accomplished. We're in the throes of Yeezy Season, and everyone is awaiting Kanye's next move, even if it comes from an unexpected source.

Matt Welty is a staff writer at Complex and you can follow him on Twitter here.