Designer Sneakers Are Good Again
Designer sneakers are starting to feel — and look — like luxury again. Historically an afterthought, they first emerged in the mid-’80s in the wake of the low-cut Gucci Tennis, considered to be the very first designer sneaker. This white shoe, quotidian and plain, set the pace for many subsequent designer sneakers to follow: Rather than shaping trends, they’d ape the effortless cool of function-first footwear without ever attaining the crossover appeal of Nike or adidas’ sporty shoes.
In the same way that luxury labels have long imitated streetwear’s effortless ease, designer sneakers always played catch-up to the real deal. But the most recent crop of high-end footwear is different. 2024 beheld a tremendous spread of in-line indulgences and sportswear collaborations that live up to their potential. Designer shoes look like designer shoes again — that is to say, designer sneakers are good again.
On the more modest side, Maison Margiela’s Sprinters sneakers flatten a retro running shape until it looks as though it spent a bit too long inside Bill Bowerman’s waffle iron. Balenciaga, long lacking serious sneaker sauce, bit back by year’s end with spicy surprises like the super-strapped Hike and ultra-minimalist Zero. Rick Owens' sneakers were already popular, to be fair, but his Vintage, a Vans skate shoe on steroids, has crossed over to becoming a mainstream favorite. And Prada, previously prone to rather uninspired sneaker design, offered up the refreshingly adventurous Collapse and sumptuous suede Trail shoe-sneaker. Even demure Bottega Veneta has gone all in on funky fresh remixes of its still-young Orbit dad shoe.
In terms of designer-sportswear crossovers, the year similarly saw a mix of fresh steps and comfortable treads. Issey Miyake’s first sportswear collaboration yielded a weirdly beautiful New Balance and Bode’s debut Nike shoe, a slick leather turf trainer, drew ravenous queues at odds with its unassuming make. LOEWE’s prescient On partnership, which began in 2022, arguably peaked in 2024 with its special-edition Cloudtilt colorways becoming one of spring’s buzziest sneakers. Loro Piana’s surprise $1,500 New Balance dad shoe was the year’s biggest luxury sneaker — and perhaps the biggest luxury-sport moment in recent memory. Not only was this LP’s first-ever proper sneaker collab, it also resulted in the most expensive NB shoe ever released.
Today’s designer shoes are made distinct by perceptible craft, meaning that they look as expensive as they are. These are very evidently designer shoes (emphasis on designer). Like designer shoes of the past, they’re still at least somewhat shaped by trend — but instead of being merely derivative, their apparent quality means that the sum is greater than its parts. Dries Van Noten’s wildly popular (and nameless) suede sneaker, for instance, lives in the same realm as the contemporaneously popular adidas’ Samba and PUMA’s Speedcat but its sumptuous leather uppers and ultra-streamlined profile elevate it in a realm all its own.
The lynchpin of this recent designer footwear wave is Miu Miu’s New Balance 530, a terrifically strong successor to the Prada sibling label’s semi-snoozy 574 dad shoes from years’ past. These New Miu Balances swapped the already popular 530 sneaker’s technical upper for single-tone leather with layered leather laces to match, lending the dad-ish shoe the luxurious cues of a dress shoe. Its new barely-there sole unit is bereft of any cushioning, all streamlined and suave-ified. As such, the $1,200 Miu Miu’s New Balance 530 thus looks more like a sneaker for ballerinas than a retro chunkster. And, four figures or not, the Miu Miu NB 530 is so obviously vital that it almost entirely sold out online in the days following its release. It’s one of the rare designer shoes so inarguably great that you actually see people wearing the Miu Balances in real life (speaking from experience here).
Because these things are typically designed many months in advance, the confluence of strong designer sneakers feels more coincidental than coordinated, which only works to their benefit. Perhaps this is the luxury industry’s answer to the quiet luxury aesthetic, which dominated 2023 when all these things were being conceived. Quiet luxury celebrates quality, not branding (or at least makes overtures as such), and has at least partially boosted demand for versatile, Samba-style sneakers. As such, rather than clamoring for attention with big logos, like those visible on 2022’s far less coveted monogrammed Gucci Gazelles, modern designer shoes lean into the IYKYK restraint typically associated with good, expensive taste.
This is why evocative shoes like the Loro Piana New Balance, Jacquemus Nike Air Max, and Balenciaga Hike need not merely hop on trends to succeed. In turn, they sometimes end up shaping the trends themselves, because these designer shoes succeed due to, well, design.
