A New Generation Is Loving Steve Madden, and He Is Here for It

New York Times

4 days ago

Steve Madden, the eponymous founder of the famous shoe brand — and a man with a somewhat complicated history — said he had never seen anything quite like this in his 35-year career. He did an interview with the 'Cutting Room Floor' fashion podcast that was posted online last week, and the reaction on social media (and beyond) has been overwhelmingly positive.
'Usually people are like 'what do you want from a con man?'' he said in a phone interview on Wednesday.
But this time, 'people were calling me and they're like, 'Did you read the comments?'' he said. 'Some people want me to run for president.' He referred to the controversies and struggles he has been a part of over the years before pausing and adding 'It's nice to be appreciated.'
Political office isn't in his future, but later in the phone interview he said that he would consider running 'for the president of the board in my building' after all this positive attention.
In the podcast interview, Mr. Madden and the host, Recho Omondi, touched on a range of topics, including his past white-collar crimes and the current government. Clips of the interview have been viewed by millions of users on TikTok, and Ms. Omondi's Patreon, which is where the podcast is posted, received 'thousands' of new subscribers, she wrote in a recent post.
In the days after the interview was released, stock in the Steve Madden brand rallied to its highest point in a month, and many TikTok users noted they were going to buy his shoes. In an emailed statement, the company said Google searches for 'Steve Madden' were up over 60 percent and website visits from organic search had increased by 10 percent.
It's a case study in the best kind of press engagement, particularly for a brand that has, for years, been outside the trendy spotlight and more often associated with clearance aisles and outlet stores, said Matthew Quint, director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership at Columbia Business School.
In the podcast interview, Mr. Madden owned up to the securities fraud he committed with Jordan Belfort, which landed him in prison in the early 2000s. (Mr. Belfort's story inspired Martin Scorsese's 2013 film 'The Wolf of Wall Street.')
'I was too ambitious, I was too greedy,' he said. 'I was complicit — I'm not blaming anybody.'
On tariffs and the global trade war, he noted that policymakers, and in particular President Trump, 'fundamentally do not understand what they're doing.' He also embraced the brand's reputation for copying styles from luxury fashion houses at cheaper price points.
'It's like calling the Beatles a knockoff band because they would take a little bit from Motown and a little bit from Elvis,' he said in the podcast interview. On the day the podcast was released, Mr. Madden sued Adidas for its 'efforts to monopolize' stripes after the sneaker brand complained that two of Mr. Madden's sneaker designs, with two stripes instead of three, infringed its trademark on the three stripes.
Most of the reaction to the podcast interview on TikTok and Reddit praised Mr. Madden's candor and his plain way of speaking. Others found it refreshing for a business leader to speak so bluntly about the current administration's policies.
For a younger generation, the interview also served as a moment of discovery, with many learning for the first time about Mr. Madden — his background, his struggles — or just putting a face to a name they have seen or heard over the years, Mr. Quint said.
'Suddenly it's like, Oh, that's Steve the shoe guy?' he said. 'There's sort of a surprise factor in all of it — the uncovering of who he is and thinking of that brand in a new light.'
Mr. Madden admitted that perhaps a younger generation was meeting him for the first time. 'I'm kind of like an author, an author that you know very well but you don't know what he looks like,' he said. 'Then they get to see me — they've been wearing my shoes forever but I'm a real guy. I'm a real guy who goes to the grocery store and curses too much, you know, and tries to be a good dad.'
In fact, his story — already extensively covered in the media, in his autobiography and in 'The Wolf of Wall Street' — is seemingly so fresh for a younger generation that many TikTok users suggested Netflix should produce a documentary about him.
During the podcast interview he was shown a pair of Alaïa shoes that his brand had replicated. His reaction was to ask, referring to his customers, 'Do you think some of my girls even know who Alaïa is?' That line struck many who viewed the interview as endearing.
'From Day 1, I have loved Steve Madden and now I love him even more,' Gabriella Masseran said in a TikTok post, reacting to the interview. 'He's for the girls,' she added, before walking her followers through her personal collection of Mr. Madden's shoes.
'It felt really genuine — he wasn't snooty,' said Victoria Thompson, 31, a government worker and content creator in Augusta, Ga. 'I felt like that could have been my uncle. And he called us his girls. I'm like, you know what? Let me go support him.'
After seeing the clips on TikTok over the weekend, she drove to the nearest Dillard's department store and bought a pair of Steve Madden slippers. They look like a type produced by Hermès, but are far less expensive.