Of All People, Dries Van Noten Designed the Single Best Post-Samba Sneaker
Dries Van Noten is, famously, not terribly concerned with trends. But newness? Newness is essential. As such, maybe it's less surprising than it seems that Van Noten's label quietly created the ultimate post-Samba designer shoe.
Part of the designer's Fall/Winter 2024 collection — the penultimate outing helmed by Van Noten himself! — the humbly named Dries Van Noten suede sneaker is indeed a high-end adidas Samba, of sorts.
If that sounds pat, well, yes. Every designer brand is doing a Samba-like shoe nowadays, making the Samba and its many imitators feel played-out by extension.
...unless?
The Dries Van Noten suede sneaker is shockingly popular, actually, one of the year's hottest designer shoes according to a Lyst ranking issued this past summer.
Sure, it's not as buzzy as adidas' own SL72 but there are several hundred dollars separating the two, so we're talking about apples and oranges, except for when it comes success. Both of these shoes are wildly successful.
The Dries Van Noten suede sneaker, for instance, is quietly racking up raving promos via GRWM-style TikTok videos while selling quite swiftly. On SSENSE, for instance, where the shoe is still not discounted despite the retailer's ongoing winter sale, the best (and beige-est) plain colorways of the DVN sneaker are nearly all sold out. Same on Mytheresa. And on Farfetch. And even on Dries' web store.
Not bad for a sneaker that retails for around $500.
The buzz around this thing is entirely word of mouth, as there's very little broader discourse on the DVN sneaker. Anecdotally, though, I've seen loads of these things in-person, which is more than I can say for all other wannabe designer Sambas.
In fact, the success of Van Noten's sneakers recalls the sudden explosion around Wales Bonner's collaborative adidas Samba shoes, the original must-have flat designer sneaker. Those things had long been popular in certain circles but, around 2022, the intangible buzz went mainstream in a big, unignorable way.
Miu Miu's ultra-flat New Balances are a similar case. They received more attention upon release but only as much as any designer shoe does. But now, much like DVN's sneaker, they're also everywhere IRL, despite being nearly thrice the price as the DVN suede.
The success of these specific designer shoes is down to a sort of build-it-and-they'll-come qualitative approach. Remix a familiar shape with tasteful materials and enough distinctiveness to stand apart. Don't mess with success. Keep to yourself. Allow people to discover it themselves. Profit.
It's not so much about riding a trend as it is about finding freshness in something that could otherwise be quite stale, imbuing understated quality-first craft into a familiar shape that in turn becomes universally covetable.
“There is not enough newness at the moment for me,” Van Noten recently told me.
“Fashion has to be created by newness, surprise, beauty. It's not just that something that you haven’t seen before is automatically good, but that emotion you get when you see something that makes you say, ‘Oh, this is really interesting. This I really would like to have because this really fits my personality.’"
