Ronnie Fieg has had a very good 2016. His sportswear brand slash retail concept Kith maintained its rocket ship-like trajectory all year, impressing sneakerheads and average guys—who just want a pair of cool sneakers—alike with delivery after delivery after delivery of piping hot exclusive product. Kith collaborated with a list of brands so long that just hearing Ronnie list them seems like an impressive feat, a list that includes (but is not limited to) Rugrats, Colette, Bape, Columbia, Timberland, Asics, Coca-Cola, Iro, Adidas, and Nike (yes, Ronnie teamed up with both Adidas and its mortal enemy Nike in the same calendar year). His Manhattan Kith store doubled in size. He opened a store in Miami. He opened a pop-up shop in Aspen, Colorado. He staged a high-octane fashion show that was part presentation and part nostalgia-tinged hip-hop concert (Fabolous and The Lox performed).

But Kith's constant presence on social media, blogs, and city streets didn’t happen overnight. Once upon a time, Fieg was just a junior buyer at David Z., a downtown footwear shop that specialized in boots, not highly coveted kicks. Slowly, through limited-edition collaborations with brands like Adidas, Asics, and Timberland, he established himself as a gatekeeper of cool. His has been a slow-but-steady takeover of the limited-edition, collaboration-happy, hyped-up retail scene that seems to matter most to millennial shoppers both in sneakers and in apparel. And becoming this successful, this quickly, is not something that comes without its fair share of naysayers.

Fieg remains dedicated to a singular underlying principal: That his products—the categories of which now include homewares and even food via his Brooklyn shop's Kith Treats cereal bar—will always be a reflection of his own preferences, and that he has no desire to sell products based on some phony, VSCO-filtered marketing campaign. Some brands might build up their image based on what Tumblr defines as cool, but Fieg is more focused on getting actual clothing into the hands of real customers, who, if this year has been any indication, are more than willing to buy into Ronnie's idea of style in 2016. But how did Fieg figure it out? And now that he’s mastered the fickle sneaker and streetwear worlds, where does he go from here? Over two lengthy interviews (one over-the-phone and one at his just-opened Aspen shop, and two of the longest he’s ever given) Fieg talked about his ascent to footwear retail king, just how big he wants his burgeoning empire to get, and why he looks to Ralph Lauren for inspiration.

What exactly is sneaker culture to you? How would you describe the community of people who enjoy sneakers?

I don’t want to call it street culture, because I don’t think that it is. It used to be street culture, but today, it’s a lot less stemming from the street and more and more from online. I come from a place where trends started on blocks where I worked, on Eighth Street in the Village. That was the most influential block in the country, where all the hip-hop artists would hang out on the weekend. You’d go to Gray’s Papaya for a hot dog, then you’d get a pair of Parasuco jeans in one of those shops that continuously changed their names, and then you come into David Z.’s for a pair of Gore-Tex boots. Those were the days that made up my DNA of who I am.

Right. Like the way breakdancers used to wear Pumas not to show everyone that they had them, but because they looked fresh when they were breakdancing. There was a connection to this real culture. And today, it’s almost like the only thing that matters are actual items once associated with it.

When Lauryn Hill spits “In some Gore-Tex and sweats I make treks like I’m homeless,”—the week that she recorded that album, I sold her the boots. And anytime when you see Ma$e and Diddy in the “Been Around the World” video and they’re wearing Dolomites, I sold them their boots. Anytime you’d see Wu-Tang with custom Wallabies, I used to get them custom made for them. Jay was there every weekend. "Cruising down Eighth Street,” when he spits that on the “[Empire State of Mind]” track, that was him every Saturday, cruising down Eighth Street. I used to help him with his Timberlands every Saturday. He would come in and buy two pairs of Chukkas, or a pair of Chukkas and a pair of Constructs.

Every week?

Every week, a fresh pair of Timbs. It wasn’t about people seeing you on social media, seeing you wear them, paparazzi, TMZ—none of that shit. It was all kept in the street. Everything that I do is with that era in mind.