Four years ago, he was working a retail job at Nike in Oxford Street.
Now former JFS pupil Jordan Dawson, 27, runs his own business and has worked with over 50 footballers including the likes of Declan Rice, Thierry Henry and Brazilian star Kaká.
He first saw his work featured on televised Premier League matches in January 2021.
An early adopter was Watford player Ismaila Sarr who wore a pair of football boots with a Senegalese flag on one side while scoring a goal against Norwich.
“I am not a showy person but to see my art in that way, wearable art is something I wouldn’t have imagined as a kid,” Mr Dawson told the JC.
Mr Dawson, whose family belongs to Barnet Synagogue, began drawing from an early age and went on to study at Camberwell College of Arts and Chelsea College of Arts.
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“Especially at a younger age, I never thought I’d do something like this but doing it as a career has made me realise it’s something I wake up and love to do every single day.”
His family, he added, have been “very supportive” of his work.
While at university, he went on to work on the shopfloor in Nike’s flagship store in central London and revamped his spare uniform trainers in his free time.
He “decided to draw on them, rip them apart, put them back together with a different shoe.”
And over time, he built a portfolio and shared it with various sportswear brands but to no avail.
Then one day, he made an appointment with Nike’s HR department armed with examples of his work.
“They actually said, ‘why have you not shown this to us before?’”.
He went on to customise Air Force 1 trainers for shop customers and caught the eye of competitors, including Converse and Puma.
He was chosen in 2019 by EA Sports to help renowned boxer Anthony Joshua design a football pitch. Then in 2021, he launched his business creating designs on footballers’ boots.
“Contacted 30 to 40 footballers a day and then [Aston Villa player Lucas Digne] picked it up, shared it on their Instagram and it just snowballed from there,” he recalled.
His Instagram following now counts 23.3k and his feed is replete with snaps of his work with some of the sport's biggest names, including Aston Villa's Ollie Watkins, Chelsea and England player Fran Kirby and others.
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Career highlights have included personalising boots for West Ham’s Declan Rice with an England flag and three lions and for Usain Bolt as part of Unicef's Soccer Aid match.
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He recalled creating hyperrealist portraits of former Arsenal legend Thierry Henry, who was a “lovely guy, always laughing, always smiling” and gave him a signed shirt.
“That was a special moment. Even being a Chelsea fan, Thierry Henry is probably one of the greatest strikers of all time, so to me to do that work was pretty special”.
Going forward, he aspires to customise boots for Chelsea player Mason Mount and separately also design his own shoe.
