The Rise and Fall of a Grail by Basecamp Staff Writer Nicolas Vargas
In Spring 2022, Brain Dead collaborated with the Oakley Factory Team to re-release their highly coveted retro-futuristic slip-on shoes, the Flesh Slip-on. The release was announced with considerable anticipation within the sneaker and Oakley communities, with the Flesh being a grail for many.
The slip-ons had reached an almost mythical status online, and when they finally returned, the response followed. The first few drops sold out on both Brain Dead and Oakley’s websites. Fast forward to 2025, and the ongoing collaboration led to more releases, including the Chop Saw, Flesh Sandal, and Chop Saw Mule, plus new designs like the Flesh Warp, released in more colorways, more seasonal drops, and more archival/futuristic variations.
Today, numerous Factory Team models and colorways are sitting at half price during sales, including pairs of the Flesh marked down nearly in half. The revival initially felt exciting but now feels exhausted. The Flesh was not only coveted for its design, but for the story it told about Oakley’s past.
Rather than building upon the ideas that created it two decades ago, Brain Dead and Oakley rehashed only the husk. Let's go back to the year 2000. A new century arrived carrying an obsession with what came next. A new horizon dawned, and with it came new ideas of what the new century might look like. Look at Oakley’s internal design team across all facets during that time. Watches, shoes, helmets, and eyewear all reflected a brand ethos centered on thinking forward.
Peter Yee, Oakley’s design strategy leader from 1993 to 2018, pioneered an Oakley think tank called Advance Concept Review (ACR) to drive future innovation. According to his official website, the parameters he established were ‘5, 10, and 20-year timelines, unconventional manufacturing processes, and bending the laws of physics.’ This ethos is what took Oakley to the next level. Iconic products, like the Over The Top glasses, the Time Bomb watch, and the Eye Jacket glasses, were released during this era.
Much like these products, the Oakley Flesh silhouette was created in June 2000 during Oakley’s innovative gold rush. These products really gave a sense of what it would be like to live in the future. Even by today’s standards, these products still look like items from a future we’ve never had.
Those products came from that philosophy. Where has that mantra gone?
Brain Dead and Oakley have revisited the drawing board, but much of the collaboration still looks back to the archives. They’re paying homage to a design rather than to the thinking that created it. Now, a one-off release can highlight what made a brand great and offer a glimpse into a beloved brand’s past. But at what point does celebrating the archive become being dependent on it?
With so many silhouettes, colorways, and multiple drops per season, what was once a hard-to-find grail is now readily available, and markdowns only make that contrast harder to ignore. That same obsession with the past has us revisiting fashion trends, rehashing old movie franchises, and looking back at what's already been done. Just because you can bring something back doesn’t mean you should. But looking back isn’t inherently bad. In fact, there’s much to learn from what came before us.
The problem is when we only bring back the physical thing without understanding what made it unique in the first place. The original Flesh isn’t a grail simply because it’s an old Oakley shoe. It’s a grail because of the thinking behind it. It came from a period when Oakley was trying to imagine what the future could look like. That is the part worth bringing back.
The answer isn’t to keep recreating the future that someone else imagined 25 years ago. It’s to take the ideas that made that future possible and imagine something of our own.
Images via Oakley
View the article on Instagram here
