Marques Brownlee Goes Sneaker Shopping With Complex
A tech reviewer with 16 million YouTube subscribers steps into the sneaker world.
Complex’s long-running “Sneaker Shopping” series has hosted rappers, athletes and actors inside Stadium Goods in New York City, but the August 5, 2019 episode brought a different kind of celebrity through the door. Marques Brownlee, the YouTuber known to millions as MKBHD, sat down with host Joe La Puma to talk shoes instead of smartphones — though the two subjects overlapped more than viewers might have expected.
- Brownlee filmed the episode with Joe La Puma at Stadium Goods, the New York consignment boutique that anchors most “Sneaker Shopping” episodes.
- He discussed the engineering behind the Nike Air Mag and Adidas’s 3D-printed Futurecraft technology, connecting his day job covering gadgets to sneaker innovation.
- Brownlee named the Air Jordan 1 as his favorite silhouette and recounted his experiences interviewing Kobe Bryant and Stephen Curry.
From Gadget Reviews to Sneaker Culture
Brownlee built his channel reviewing phones, laptops and cameras, but “Sneaker Shopping” gave him a chance to apply that same technical curiosity to footwear. Rather than just picking out pairs he liked, he walked through the actual engineering decisions behind them — treating a shoe rack the way he’d treat a product teardown.
La Puma steered the conversation toward the self-lacing Nike Air Mag, the shoe originally teased as fictional gear from “Back to the Future Part II” before Nike turned it into a real, limited-release product with automated laces. Brownlee also brought up Adidas’s Futurecraft line, which uses 3D-printed midsoles to customize cushioning — a detail that fits squarely into the kind of hardware innovation he covers for a living.
Brownlee pointed to the Air Mag and Futurecraft as proof that sneaker design was starting to run on the same innovation cycle as consumer tech.
The Air Jordan 1 Stays on Top
For all the talk of 3D printing and self-lacing tech, Brownlee’s personal taste landed somewhere more classic. He singled out the Air Jordan 1 as his favorite silhouette, putting him in line with a huge share of the sneaker-collecting audience that gravitates toward Michael Jordan’s original 1985 signature shoe over newer performance models.
Talking Kobe Bryant and Stephen Curry
Brownlee’s day job has put him across the table from NBA stars, and he used the segment to share stories from interviewing and collaborating with Kobe Bryant and Stephen Curry. Those conversations gave the episode a natural bridge between his tech-reviewer credentials and the athlete-driven world that “Sneaker Shopping” usually covers, since both Bryant and Curry have had major signature-shoe deals of their own with Nike and Under Armour, respectively.
The episode fit into a broader trend of celebrity crossover content that outlets like Complex have leaned on for years, the same instinct that drives entertainment coverage of unexpected pairings in the celebrity space more generally. Brownlee’s appearance worked because he wasn’t performing sneaker knowledge he didn’t have — he was applying the same specificity he brings to phone reviews to the shoes on the wall at Stadium Goods.
Complex has kept “Sneaker Shopping” running for years by mixing athletes, musicians and now tech personalities into the same format, and Brownlee’s episode was a signal that the show’s guest list is widening well past the usual hip-hop and hoops crowd. Given how often his tech takes go viral in their own right, don’t be surprised if Complex circles back for a part two once the next wave of engineered sneakers — Air Mag successors included — actually hits shelves.
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