Goooood morning, fam. Welcome back to the Kicks You Wear. Thank you so much for rocking with me today. I appreciate you.
A cool thing: Over the weekend I realized The Kicks You Wear will be 3 years old on October 7. When I started this thing, I truthfully thought it’d be a personal blog where I just mused on my favorite sneakers. It’s grown into so much more and I have all of you to thank for that.
I still don’t know exactly what I’m building or how to go about building it — I’ve never been the best self-promoter lol. But I’m grateful to have you here with me along this ride. Love u.
Enough sappy stuff. Let’s jump in.
Is this what true accessibility means in 2022?
It’s been a pretty wild weekend in the sneaker world. The headline of it all is definitely Tom Sachs’ General Purpose sneaker popping up in Kohl's.
Yes, that happened: It's all part of the accessibility play baked into the shoe's marketing.
Only select Kohl's stores across the country received pairs of these joints.
Obviously, they were being sold at retail price. They were placed on the shelves just as any normal sneaker would’ve been.
This was weird: For those of you who are new to sneakers, this isn’t something you’d see very often. It’s probably something we won’t see for a long time after this.
There were literal lines outside of the Kohl’s stores with resellers and sneakerheads trying to get these joints. I feel like at least three of those words do not belong together in the previous sentence. Yet here we are thanks to the GPS.
It’s also good: This is a positive overture in the push to make hyped sneakers truly accessible. Putting these in stores goes a long way in flooding the market and making them available at retail while also watering down that resale price so that, once they sell out, they’re easy to circle back on online.
It’s also worth noting that this Kohl’s drop came on the same weekend as the SNKRS drop. That’s intentional.
But…I will say this felt a little too stunt-y to me? Maybe I'm being too cynical here, but I still don’t feel like the shoes are exactly completely “accessible” by the definition of the word.
This isn’t a pair that you can just hop online and cop like, say, a Waffle One.
And, look. The fact that they’re in Kohl’s stores is a good thing. However, they were only available in a handful of them. And we have no idea what the inventory looked like at each.
This is nitpicky stuff: I don’t want it to seem as though this isn’t appreciated. It absolutely is. And this is probably the most fun, interesting thing to happen in sneakers this year.
But when the marketing campaign for these shoes is centered around complete accessibility, I think it’s fair to ask exactly what that’s supposed to look like.
Maybe this is it. Relative to other hyped shoes on the market, these have definitely been more available than not.
I just hope that there’s a lot more of this to come.
Joe FreshGoods broke some news while breaking the internet (aka me)
Joe FreshGoods had the internet shook out there for a minute when he posted “End of an era” with all of his New Balance sneakers lined up — including the forthcoming 993s.
BOY it felt like a code red.
My DMs on Twitter and IG were on fire. “Is he really leaving? Where’s he going? Do you think they’d just let him go?”
As it turns out this was a false alarm. He pointed specifically to an end with this pastel color palette — not New Balance.
The aftermath: I don’t want to make a bigger deal out of this than what it actually is. Nothing is happening here.
But the overwhelming “say it ain't so” reaction from people felt pretty incredible to me.
This isn’t something we’d see surrounding New Balance collabs just 3 or 4 years ago. This sort of fanfare is new and it’s only beginning.
At the stem of it is JFG who has easily been one of the best, brightest and most consistent collaborators in the business right now.
The big picture: New Balance would be smart to hold on to Joe and this feeling for as long as they can.
Let him direct more project. Give him bigger keys. There’s a real wave here and they’d be smart to hang 10.
It’s probably good that you missed out on the StockX blunder
I told y’all the weekend was filled with some weird sneaker news. Did you happen to use the $100 StockX promo code that leaked on Saturday night? Because a whole lotta folks did.
What happened:
On Saturday evening a StockX promo code leaked onto Twitter. No idea where it came from or what it was for. There was no corresponding event surrounding it and no limit to it.
It worked, though. And folks got their purchases OFF. Allegedly at least 50,000 of them, according to this tweet.
Of course…by the following day, most of those orders were canceled. So if you missed out, don’t feel bad. It’s a good thing. Otherwise, you’d be giving StockX a 3-to-5 business day loan and no one wants to do that.
The company said the code was “unauthorized,” per Sole Retriever.
That makes sense. Promo codes aren’t just arbitrarily made — they get approved and shipped off. And, typically, they have lots of limits with them, too.
Safe to say somebody is probably in trouble after this. I’m grateful for the laugh though.
The Taxi 1’s are ELITE
Y’all know I’m not the biggest Jordan 1 hype man. But we got our hands on the Taxi 1s for Special Delivery and these joints are a top 3 AJ1 of this year to me.
Lost & Founds. Georgetowns. These. That’s where I’m at with it.
What’s droppin, bruh?
Aime Leon Dore x New Balance 650 — Monday, October 3
Nike Air Max Scorpion — Wednesday, October 5
Air Jordan 4 “Black Canvas” — Wednesday, October 5
New Balance 2002r “Protection Pack” — Friday, October 7
Nike Dunk Low “Argon” — Saturday, October 8
Thank you, again, so much for rocking with me. I appreciate y’all. You’re the best. Every second of your time is a blessing to me. And your gorpcore recs have been awesome! I’m going to be fly as hell for my hikes this year.
Let’s chat again on Friday. Peace and love. Be easy. Be safe. Be kind. And we out.
-Sykes 💯