FEBRUARY 2023

ART & ENTERTAINMENT
Ivan Jaddou:
The shoemaker
BY CAL ABBO
Ivan Jaddou has taken anything but
a traditional Chaldean path. He
forged his own way, forcing himself
into one of the world’s toughest
industries, mainly through sheer hard
work and inspired drive. At every turn,
Jaddou proved that he can compete
with and should be ranked among the
world’s top shoe designers.
Jaddou grew up in Dearborn, right
next to the Ford Motor Company World
Headquarters. His childhood was classic
Detroit with Chaldean garnish.
“I did elementary, middle, and high
school in Dearborn,” Jaddou said. He
also was selected for and attended
the Dearborn Center for Math, Science
and Technology (DCMST), an
exclusive, part-time high school with
an advanced curriculum. Many of the
courses offered at DCMST adhere to
the Advanced Placement program or
have a dual enrollment agreement
with a local college.
“I started by trying out a more
traditional route,” said Jaddou. “I
thought I wanted to do medicine and
be a doctor because I wanted to help
people. I shadowed my uncle, who has
his own practice, doing basic things
like taking blood pressure and vitals
and watching him work.”
While Jaddou acquired experience
in the medical field, he attended
Wayne State University and enrolled in
some basic, pre-requisite courses like
biology and chemistry. “I was so bored
that I spent all my time drawing in my
notebook instead of balancing equations,”
he said. “I started to get good
at sketching again, and it just so happened
to be sneakers.”
While this wasn’t Jaddou’s first experience
as an artist, it represented a
return to an older craft that he cultivated
in his childhood. “As a kid, I loved
to draw cartoons like Dragon Ball Z,
Powerpuff Girls, Johnny Bravo, and
anything else on Cartoon Network,” he
recalled. “But I stopped drawing for a
while once I got into high school.”
Jaddou remembers a specific defining
moment in his late teenage years.
“It was a pair of Y-3 shoes,” he said.
The Y-3 series, made by the famed
Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto,
is renowned for its combination of elegance,
versatility, and extreme quality
at a reasonable price.
“These shoes lasted me longer
than any shoe I’ve ever worn,” Jaddou
said. “There’s something really special
about this product. At the end of
its use, even when it was worn down,
I actually ended up loving them more.
They charmed me and I wanted to
keep them. Even though they’re beat
up, I didn’t want to throw them away
because we’d been through so much
together.” Little did he know, Jaddou
would work directly on the Y-3 brand
years later.
Once Jaddou realized that medicine
wasn’t for him, the transition
was fast. He wasted no time telling
his parents he wanted to do design.
“My mother was so happy for me that
I found something I really love to do.
I’m lucky to have my parents the way
that they are, supporting me with everything
that I want to do and trusting
that it will work out,” he said.
But Jaddou had no professional or
academic art background and no real
portfolio to showcase his work. So, he
enrolled in art classes at Henry Ford
Community College, hoping to gain
enough experience to build a portfolio.
“I struggled a lot. I wasn’t one of
the art kids,” he said. “I had to find my
artistic side once again.”
In that moment, he went all in. “I
told myself that if I was going to do
this, I would do it 110%,” Jaddou said.
“I thought of my dad going to work every
day. Spending 14 hours on his feet
at the grocery store on a Sunday. I’d
like to think I inherited some of that
work ethic from him.”
Jaddou’s entire family except his
father spent that summer in San Diego.
“I spent the summer alone with
my father, working on my portfolio to
enter art school,” he said. Finally, Jaddou
was accepted to the College for
Creative Studies (CCS) in Detroit.
“In the 2010s, there were all these
designer sneakers coming out. Lanvin,
Common Projects, Trussardi – there
was a new market of luxury sneakers
that hadn’t really happened before,”
he said. “I wanted to own these, but
they were too expensive. Some of them
were priced near $1,000.”
Jaddou took inspiration from these
new luxury brands and began designing
his own. “As a Chaldean, with the
entrepreneurial background of my
parents, I tried to start my own brand,”
he said. “I tried to enter the luxury
shoe market but wanted a target price
around $200. I partnered with a friend
studying business. We both put our
money in.”
Not long after, Jaddou and his
partner shopped their designs and
scouted potential manufacturers. “We
traveled to Brazil to try and develop
everything, but we lost our funds,” he
said. “We got to second prototypes and
we were looking at packaging.” They
soon realized that building a shoe
brand required more capital and time
than they could afford, so they abandoned
the project, but Jaddou added
his painstaking designs to his professional
portfolio.
Art school changed how Jaddou
saw the world. “It opened my mind
to a whole other world of design,” he
said. “Everything around us in the
man-made world is designed somehow.
Even if it’s not made by humans,
even if it comes from nature. It opened
my mind to take everything from a design
perspective.”
Jaddou reports that, at CCS, “you’re
acting on your creativity.” There are
fewer tests, but you still have to solve
problems and think strategically. Business
and design, for example, are inextricably
linked.
“In every business, if there’s a
product you’re selling, it needs to be
designed somehow, and there’s a designer
behind it,” according to Jaddou.
“Even if it’s a grocery store. Even
a mom-and-pop shop needs branding.
You need architecture, a façade, interior,
signage, branding, food products,
refrigeration. Everything is designed
somehow. Many businesses are successful
because of excellent design.”
Jaddou’s sparkling international
career really began on Career Day at
CCS. “The whole day, nobody came
to my work,” he said. “At the very last
minute, the Adidas recruiter comes up
to me and says, ‘I wanted to save you
for last.’ He told me about their internship
program in Portland, and I got it
that summer. I always had this dream
that my work would be so good that
people will invite me to other countries
and my work will take me around
the world.” Portland, it turns out, was
relatively close to home.
“I looked at this internship as a golden
ticket,” Jaddou said. “I was obsessed
with my work there. I never really did
anything else. I had to give it everything
and maybe it would lead to something
else. I stayed up late, thinking of new
concepts and sketches, and really impressed
some of my superiors.”
One day, one of the design directors
SHOES continued on page 36
34 CHALDEAN NEWS FEBRUARY 2023