Why This Aimé Leon Dore New Balance Should Influence All Future Shoe Collabs
Aimé Leon Dore gets a lot of foot traffic at its flagship stores. The brand's effortfully cultivated (and much imitated) visual language is likely a draw but the Aimé Leon Dore-branded New Balance sneakers that roll out on a near-quarterly schedule are almost assuredly the main appeal.
That's no diss, either: ALD has elevated classy New Balance sneaker collabs to a veritable cottage industry. Its limited shoes are so in-demand that they've transcended cult hit to mainstream fame.
The demand hasn't waned even as ALD deprioritized its smash New Balance 550 releases in favor of odder collaborative models like the low-profile 500, dad shoe-coded 1000 and super dad shoe-coded 996.
As such, ALD has the freedom to release whatever collaborative shoe it likes whenever it likes and expect a swift sellout.
Which is why it's so intelligent that ALD is instead reiterating a drop technique it first practiced with its debut New Balace 860 collaboration for its next stab at the technical running sneaker.
Quietly released on its website on July 17, ALD's $150 New Balance 860v2 is offered in three metallic-tinged colorways so conventionally uncool that were they not branded with "Aimé Leon Dore" on their tongue, you might not know they were even a collaboration.
They're also not releasing until at least February 2025.
This is a smart technique that, frankly, ought to be the norm for this sort of hyped sneaker drop.
These shoes inspire such vast demand that it's impossibly rare to actually get any of them at retail, forcing fans to seek out sneaks through resale sites. This should be the exception, not the norm, especially considering that these shoes often only flip for a couple bucks more than MSRP.
But you'll never stop the stampede for big drops and production delays typically mean that shoes ideated in one year are only widely available in the next. What to do?
Release the shoes a year in advance, perhaps. This helps cull the scalpers from the true believers, or at least level the playing field.
It might be a hard sell for less buzzy team-ups, and is absolutely anthemic to our era of must-have-it-yesterday shopping, see-now-buy-now, next-day shipping.
But, for brands that can swing it, this process grants bigger (and weirder) drops like this an air of made-to-order scarcity, aligning with the aura of exclusivity that ALD already aims for, aesthetically.
And while you wait for your new shoes, there's always the Aimé Leon Dore cafe.
