The Kicks You Wear, Vol. 101 — Your sneakers are Slacking
Yup. Cole Haan made KYW. 2020 is still 2020'ing.
Good morning, folks! Welcome back to the Kicks You Wear! Thank y’all for being here with me on this glorious Friday morning.
We’re inching closer and closer to 2,000 subs! That giveaway is coming soon, folks! Make sure you’re on board.
A housekeeping note before we get started. The newsletter will be taking a break from October 16th to 26th. I’ll be taking a bit of time between then to decompress, breathe and come up with new ideas to make this thing better. Hopefully, you won’t miss me too much!
Let’s jump in.
Never Slackin’
(Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash)
Another week in 2020 brings us yet another collaboration that absolutely no one — not a single person — asked for.
Cole Haan dropped a collab with Slack this week and it’s literally everything you could ask for if you’re an employee that works for Slack. Because, honestly, that’s the only person I could see actually wearing these.
Behold.
From a scale of 1 to “extreme tech bro,” these are way, waaaaay on the tech bro end. This shoe is very clearly one made for the business casual office space.
It stays in the general spirit of what Cole Haan has become known for — business casual shoes that are both comfortable and appropriate for work. The Slack logo and colors are supposed to bring a bit of flare to the equation here.
I’ve spent way too much time thinking about these shoes over the last few days. Mostly because I can’t figure out just who these are for.
I have absolutely no idea who would actually wear these joints. The only audience the make sense for, again, are actual Slack employees. You also have your Slack enthusiasts out there, I guess, but, uh…
Let’s keep it a buck. Are there really any Slack enthusiasts out there? The notification sound is nightmare fuel. Slack is more known for inducing workplace anxiety than anything else. I’m not wearing that on my foot, fam.
Let’s take a step back and think about this thing for a sec. This is a collaboration. The purpose of collaborations, in general, is to create buzz. This drop does that — this has been in blogs across the internet all week. That’s what hype is.
But that’s fleeting. What happens after this? Where do these shoes go from here? They dropped on October 6th and most sizes are still in stock. No one asked for these. No one wants them. Cole Haan isn’t any better for this. Neither is Slack. So what was the point?
This is the 2020 sneaker game in a nutshell. No, scratch that. That’s reductive. This is the 2020 commerce game in a nutshell. Take literally any product and attach it to a “thing” — it can be a celebrity, a product or, apparently, even software. Give it a limited run and then sell.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes these things hit and you have weird, yet cool, activations like McDonalds x Travis Scott. Other times, it ends up being this.
We have to live with them either way.
Adidas is threading the future
(Photo by Marcos Rivas on Unsplash)
Adidas is all about innovation. Think everything from Boost to its entire Futurecraft and 3D printing division.
They’re back at it again with their new concept shoe, the Futurecraft STRUNG. This is an entire shoe threaded together by a robot, per Engadget. A ROBOT, Y’ALL.
Adidas says it’s robot can weave threads diagonally across the midsole of a shoe with each thread being intentionally placed to perfectly fit the foot.
It uses data collected quantitatively on general comfort as well as feedback from the individual wearer to determine exactly how a shoe should be threaded to perfectly fit a foot for maximum comfort and durability.
Here’s what the process looks like.
And this is the end result.
(via Adidas)
This is fascinating. It seems to be Adidas’ next innovation to go with its 4D midsoles. The STRUNG’s upper is supposed to ultra-light compared to the heavier 3D printed midsole of the shoe.
A few thoughts, though.
I’ll bet this is really expensive. Adidas’ 4D stuff has generally been $220 and up — this probably blows that away.
I’m also interested in seeing how scalable this thing actually is. It seems difficult, logistically, to market these en masse. But its Adidas — they’ll probably figure it out.
Unfortunately, we won’t know how it feels until late 2021 at the earliest when the shoe becomes available.
J Balvin up next
Speaking of weird 2020 commerce and collaborations, McDonalds is back at it again. This time, they’re with Latin Trap star J Balvin instead of Travis Scott.
Balvin has his own McDonalds meal equipped with a Big Mac and an Oreo McFlurry.
Going from Travis Scott to J Balvin is definitely not a terrible transition — honestly, it’s pretty great. Balvin has a massive global following of his own. This is a good move in an attempt to attract a young, diverse audience.
I just hope they don’t have too many more of these collabs on tap — they get stale after a minute. And, also, please give us a healthier meal. A double cheeseburger and an oreo milkshake are, uh, probably not the greatest.
We love to see another environmentally conscience Dunk
Absolutely love to see it! The OG Eric Koston gave us a sneak peek.
If only they’d stop making 3,000 pairs of Dunks available for 30,000 people at a time. Maybe we’d all have some hope in getting these. Oh well — the game is the game, I suppose.
Either way, these are dope! And it’s always great to see the hype going green.
#TheKicksWeWear
Y’ALL ALREADY KNOW WTF GOING ON. LET’S GOOOOOO.
First, the homie Noetic popped out in some absolutely classic Reeboks.
The homie Mitch came through with the 990’s like they were the Infinity Stones.
The Croc gang came through. First, the homie Brett wore some tie-dye joints. Pamela and Jasmine both followed up looking mad cozy.
The homie Storm came through STUNTING in the Questions.
Kayla popped out clean in the Quai 54 AJ5's. My goodness smh.
The homie Jaire came through in the OG Bred lows and they are PHENOMENAL.
The homie Adrian came through with MAD Dad vibes in the Monarchs.
The homie J Block popped out with the Acronym Vapormax Mocs. So clean!
And the homie Muhammad RLee sent us packing with these Lemon Venom AJ4s. GOODNESS.
SMOKED IT. Again.
That’s a wrap for Friday, folks! Thanks so much for rocking with your boy today! As always, appreciate your time.
Don’t forget — subscribe! Have your homies subscribe, too! Free pairs of shoes await, family!
Until next time, yo! Peace and love. Be easy. Be well. Be kind.
Signing off.
—Sykes 💯
the gum sole reeboks - classic!
slack + Cole Haan a bridge too far
let us have our junk food Sykes c'mon my guy