A Brain Dead Cofounder Shh Reworks Converse’s Vintage Flagship

Ed Davis brings his Ecstatic Research eye for detail to the All Star LGCY Hi, swapping polish for a deliberately unfinished look.

Ed Davis’s name has circled the edges of streetwear for over a decade without most people clocking it. He cofounded Brain Dead alongside Kyle Ng back in 2014, spent years as the label’s main graphic engine, and eventually stepped away to build something quieter. That something is Ecstatic Research, a Tokyo based menswear project he now runs on his own terms, and it is the vehicle behind his new connection with Converse: the ALL STAR LGCY HI / Ed Davis, item number 31318920.

Converse’s own announcement describes Davis plainly, as a Melbourne born graphic artist, publisher and creative director now working out of Tokyo. That frame lines up with an interview he gave earlier this year, where he talked about leaving Brain Dead to get back to making clothes by hand and rebuilding the collaborative process that first drew him to the work. A handful of Japanese sneaker blogs covering this release have described him instead as a British artist, which does not match either the brand’s own bio or his own account of his background, and that discrepancy is worth flagging rather than repeating as fact.

The gap between those two bios is small on its face but says something about how thin the reporting trail gets once a name moves from a well documented label like Brain Dead into a smaller, self run project. Ecstatic Research does not have the same press infrastructure behind it that Brain Dead built over a decade, so a single misattributed detail can travel quickly across secondary coverage before anyone traces it back to the source. Converse’s own bio and Davis’s own words in interview form remain the two most reliable anchors here, and both agree with each other.

stir

The base shoe is the ALL STAR LGCY Hi, Converse’s modern reworking of the 1960s and 1970s All Star, built with a sharper toe shape, a thicker rubber tape and the classic heel label, all sitting on a cushion sole meant to feel considerably better than the original ever did. Davis’s version keeps that silhouette untouched and treats the upper as a canvas instead, printing his own graphic across it in a reflective finish that only fully reveals itself under direct light, a small technical flourish that turns a plain white shoe into something that behaves differently depending on where you are standing.

The Converse × MoMA Chuck Taylor All Star pairs the iconic high-top sil with a soft lavender canvas upper and understated museum branding. Styled in a min studio setting, the collaboration emphasizes timeless design through subtle detailing while celebrating Converse’s enduring relationship with contemporary art and culture.

That graphic carries over into the tongue lining as well, where Davis contributed a second, dedicated piece of artwork rather than repeating the upper’s print. It is the kind of detail that rewards someone who actually takes their shoes off rather than someone scrolling a product photo, which tracks with how Davis has talked about his own design process: less concerned with a shoe reading well in a single flat image, more interested in what someone notices after they have owned it for a while.

prototype

The most distinctive move in the whole collide is a small one. Davis flipped the heel label and the ankle patch, both normally printed right side up and legible, so that they read as if a factory sample had come off the line before someone caught the mistake. Converse’s own language around the release calls this an intentional nod to the look of a prototype still in development, and it is a clever piece of restraint for a collaboration that could easily have leaned on a louder, more graphic heavy approach given Davis’s history with Brain Dead’s maximalist print work.

Alongside the shoe, Converse is releasing a limited Tee sold only through its own flagship stores, built on a heavyweight cloth fabric, relaxed oversized cut and featuring an original graphic Davis drew specifically for this release, rendered in a fluorescent green that pulls a visible line back to the tongue artwork on the shoe itself. The white only colorway keeps both pieces from competing with each other, letting the graphic work and the reversed branding carry the collection rather than a palette change.

The Liverpool FC × Converse Chuck Taylor All Star reimagines the iconic high-top with club-inspired graphics, repeating “You’ll Never Walk Alone” typography, and signature Liverpool detailing. Presented against a rich red backdrop, the collision blends football heritage with one of Converse’s most enduring silhouettes.

rel

The ALL STAR LGCY HI / Ed Davis retails for sixteen thousand five hundred yen, with the companion T shirt at eight thousand eight hundred yen, both confirmed through Converse’s own Japanese retail listing. Sizing on the shoe runs from 22.0 to 30.0 centimeters. Converse’s own announcement lists a release date of Friday, July 24, 2026, while Japanese sneaker press coverage of the same release, and the brief behind this piece, both point to July 29, 2026 instead. Neither date is resolved here in favor of the other. It is worth checking Converse’s own Japanese retail channel directly before assuming either one.

What is confirmed without conflict is where it will be sold. The shoe and the T shirt are both slated for release through Converse’s own retail channels in Japan, with the T shirt specifically limited to Converse’s directly operated stores rather than wider retail. No international release window has been announced alongside the Japanese one, which keeps this collaboration in the same regional lane as most of Converse Japan’s designer partnerships, built for a domestic audience first and picked up secondhand by collectors elsewhere later.

For a convincer whose most famous prior work involved loud, maximalist graphic collage, this is a notably restrained release. It reads less like an attempt to reintroduce Ed Davis to an audience that already knows Brain Dead, and more like a quiet extension of what Ecstatic Research has been doing on its own, one small, deliberate detail at a time.