Interview with Tabatha

Over the past few months I have undertaken several interviews with women who I think play pivotal roles within Sneaker Culture. Married to the Mob being one of them, I was fortunate enough to have a chat with the lovely Tabatha who is in charge of the blogs at Married to the Mob. Married to the Mob if you don't know collaborate with popular brands to make fresh and exciting sneakers especially for the ladies, as well as a range of apparel.

How did Married to the Mob start? Like was it one person who just started it or was it a whole group?
Mob, like most things, started as a simple idea. Leah – creator – was hanging out drinking on her stoop one day with her girls and the concept just crossed her mind. She was friends with a lot of the guys who were already in the business, making clothes for dudes, and she knew that there was nothing out there in the same genre for women. Without wasting any time, she had samples made, and long story short, here we are now, in an office on the 66th floor of the empire state building with racks and racks of clothes to show for it! Not bad for a simple idea...
Have the members of Married to the Mob and you yourself always been into sneakers?
I think it’s safe to say that we’re all sneaker lovers, even if some of us may have moved on to ‘big girl’ shoes now. We’re really just a bunch of city kids for the most part, we grew up being fully submerged in the streetwear culture, before it was even ‘street wear’, so yeah, we’re into them!
How did you guys get approached to start doing collaborations? Or was it Married to the Mob who did the approaching? Was it something that you had always planned on doing or was it more you were given the opportunity so you took it?
As far as collaborations go, I think it’s something that now happens naturally with brands operating within a similar niche. Each brand is doing well on it’s own and then they may turn to one another and think “we’d make cute babies”. You could look at it like any relationship, you have to build it up, butter one another up if you will, and you both have to have a respect for one another so that you can combine your ideas well. I wouldn’t say that any one person is doing more approaching, it’s a mutual thing. But certain opportunities are rare too, so yeah, when they’re there, snatch them.
Are there any brands you'd love to collaborate with that you haven't? Like is there a dream shoe that you guys just want to go to town on?
God, in terms of collaborations, there are so many we’d love to get into! I mean if we could, we’d work with all our biggest influences – Chanel, Sonia Rykiel, Stella McCartney! - but alas, it doesn’t always work that way. We’ll just have to wait and see. And as far as a dream shoe goes...I’m really not sure. Speaking on behalf of myself, it’d be awesome if we could do something that wasn’t a sneaker, perhaps just a straight heel? But then maybe we wouldn’t get the same dope effect of combining unlikely styles, the way we can with sneakers.
Do you think that females who are into kicks get stereotyped within the culture? For instance some people I know associate sneakers with sport and to wear them casually as a girl is seen as unfeminine, do you think a lot of people see it that way?
I don’t think that people necessarily associate a chick wearing sneakers to being a tomboy anymore, because the options for females have come a LONG way. There’s girls now that spend just as much money on sneakers as they do their nails and hair, and can even have iller collections than dudes. She may get called a sneakerhead or a hipster or something, but I actually think sneakers on a chick is a turn on for a lot of men nowadays. They love to see us invading their shit!
A lot of the brands will offer female alternatives to the male designs, I mean I’ve seen plenty of pink and pastel nike air max 90s going around in places like footlocker, even though a lot of sneaker heads prefer to buy the designs for men. Why is it do you think they aren’t paying attention to this?
why aren’t people/females picking up on the pastel versions you mean? That’s the unfortunate thing, whenever Nike or whoever makes a sneaker release for women, it comes in all these fruity girl colors – what, we can’t run the dark shit like the boys? Just because it’s pink, doesn’t make us want it more. The whole point is the close the division between male and female, not make it larger by stereotyping the sneakers available to us. Sometimes you can’t even cheat and get a smaller size, because mens releases won’t produce under a size 8! I hate that shit...
Married to the Mob often try to (In my opinion) collaborate with shoes that have quite strong and sometimes dominant male personalities, like for example the pro mama, that shoe is great I think because you’ve turned a masculine basketball shoe into something uniquely feminine just with some nice subtle touches. What is the message you try to send with your collaborations in regards to women sneaker fiends around the world?
I agree, I think that when we collaborate, we like to tread on territory familiar to the males. We like scaring boys! When designing sneaker collaborations, first we focus on what we like and what we would wear, because that’s the best way to get an idea of what your customer will like. Then of course, we incorporate the MOB attitude. We want girls to see them and say “holy shit, finally, a dope ass sneaker for girls”, and then we want boys to see them and say “damn, those would look dope on my girl”. Win win! But genders aside, we just want it to be aesthetically pleasing to everyone, we don’t like to lean to much to one demographic or age group, because the MOB demographic is a wide one.
I really hate when a shoe doesn't come in my size, do you think that with the rise in number of girls who love kicks there needs to be more said to the designers? Maybe suggest to them releasing some of the guys colourways in smaller sizes? 
I think it’d be great to get designers and sneaker brands making smaller sizes in mens shoes, so that women can get in on it. Some sneakers simply shouldn’t have gender separation when they release.
What are your thoughts on the current wave of simple shoes that are coming out? There was that wave of retro revival recently, and it's still around but at least here in Melbourne everything has been stripped back to canvas and vulcanised soles, do you think that the designers have run out of ideas?
Designers ran out of ideas a long, long time ago! Now they’re all just borrowing existing ones and hopefully expanding on them to make them original and unique again, but so many cant. I know what kinds of shoes you’re talking about, theyre everywhere here too, very big within the hipster fixed gear bike crowd. Definitely not my thing.
Within Married to the Mob do each of you have your own favourite brands that you collect or do you just go for whatever looks awesome? On that note are some of you collectors that have entire rooms dedicated to sneakers?
Well all of us at MOB have different tastes, which is good during the creative process, because you’re getting a good range of opinions. In terms of sneakers though, I’d say that overall we’re Nike girls here. I definitely am, I don’t really wear other brands, maybe a nice Adidas gazelle? I don’t know that any of us are collectors on an apartment space-reducing sense, but we all know people who do, for sure!
If there was any shoe you could design on or mash up with another shoe, what would it be?
Well once again, this is coming from me and I cant really speak for the other girls, but I’ve always wanted to do a Nike AF1! That’s what we were originally leaning towards when the company started and we were first thinking about dream collabs. It just makes sense, we’re NYC girls and that’s definitely a NY shoe too.
What has Married to the Mob got in store for the future? If you are allowed to divulge that information that is, anything completely jaw dropping?
As for MTTM’s future, who knows! We’re going to keep doing our thing and spreading the Married to the Mob attitude everywhere we can, we have projects lined up that I have to keep hush hush, but otherwise we just go with the flow and wait to see where vibes lead us. Stay tuned...
This is probably something I should have asked first up, please describe what it is Married to the Mob do?
I’m officially our blog writer (mobliving.com) and “PR girl”, I deal with our ‘preferred’ customers when they come through to the showroom and need to get hooked up, but I’d say that I’m an all around go-to girl here. I’ve known leah and been with the company pretty much since the beginning, so I have a good sense of how things operate.
Thanks for giving me some of your time to let me interview, it’s been a great experience.