I ragged on one of my players for showing up to a Saturday scrimmage last month wearing a pair of inflated looking white sneakers for about ten minutes. Got home that night and checked the price tag. Two hundred and forty dollars. For shoes he never planned on actually training in. That was when it clicked that I’d been approaching trendy and actually good as one and the same for much too long. They are not the same thing, have never been.
The kicker about this as far as shoes specifically is concerned?
The cycle moves quickly because it probably can. Margins are good on them and creating hype doesn’t cost much these days, some youtube kid straps a pair on Tuesday and by weekend every dude at the Shell is rocking some variant of them. I’m guilty of buying into it too believe me, thought I needed a pair of bulky retro runners last 2022 because everyone seemed to have a pair and wore mine about four times before they ended up lifeless and sorely forgotten in my closet. But when your’e talking about something you expect to actually last for years, appeal and quality are two very different discussions, and yet most advice peddled as “menswear” these days is just remixing the former and pretending it’s the latter.
The Trend Cycle Is Mostly Noise, and I Say That as Someone Who Extremely Follows It
I love all this stuff. I read the newsletters, I see what the dudes with better haircut than mine are posting wearing. Trust me, I want a new pair of fresh off the renderjoy as much as the next guy. But once you’ve bought enough pairs of shoes online just to return because you realize they look terrible on you, you start to notice something. The rotation isn’t about the shoes, it’s about spinning something quickly so they can spin something else next.
A style gets decreed dead every year and a half so a new one can be declared essential, and the shoes in the middle? The ones that weren’t trying to be trendy at all but simply been around longer than both of them? Those are usually the ones that actually hold up.
I’ve got a classic pair of leather low tops right now that I bought three years ago because they seemed….boring. White, plain, not much branding showing, no large logo slapped on the side panel. My assistant coach was literally asking me where mine were from while we ran drills last fall because his were ripping at the toe box from him just walking around his campus all season long and mine showed zero signs of wear. Not because they looked cool but because they didn’t. Now that’s a review you can trust, not some article titled “10 sneakers every guy needs this fall” from someone wearing loafers.
Side note, a ton of this currently “in fashion” cycling through also was in fashion five years ago but had different copy on the box. Bulk? Last year’s were dressed like dads. Then slim white leather? Bulk again. Now we’re in this weird limbo where everyone’s going oversized-but-not looks like they tried too hard on purpose and calling it “elevated casual.” I’ve already lived through this twice in my adult life. So when somebody tells me brand x sneakers are “back” my immediate reaction isn’t hype, it’s skepticism. What are they really doing differently here that we didn’t see the last rotation, or are we fifteen months into the same trend with just new color options.
Of course I’m not going to tell you that literally everything these websites tell you is crap and that you should throw away your car payment sneakers either. Don’t act like you don’t hate yourself every time you open your wallet after you buy a new pair too. But there’s a difference between recognizing something is being hyped as trendy for reasons inconsistent with it’s quality and saying nothing is good just because the companies selling them are idiots. You need shoes to wear on actual days. Some of these will hold up because they were designed that way, others won’t because…well brands are still idiots.
Actually Good Shoes That Don’t Sneak Up And Kick You In The Groin
Tell you what though, if I’m being honest with you guys. Three styles have actually earned their spots this year in my opinion, and I haven’t just stood in them at a retailers mirror I’ve put miles on these.
Suede desert boots. Quality leather low tops. Despite mine being boring white I mentioned above. All three of these styles hold up because they do what nearly every shoe company promises and then absolutely none of them follow through on; they can go casual and classy with equal ease. Wore mine to a Friday night football game and a Sunday brunch a week ago and was told they matched my outfit at both (checks watch and realizes he’s wearing the same shoes as he wrote this in.) neither once. If your shoe can get you through jeans and chinos without looking like a chump in either? You’ve found something worth spending money on.
Suede desert boots are my go to right now for when I want to dress it up without breaking my trusty white pairs vibe. They’ve easily become my spring through fall comfort shoe because they fill a hole in my rotation I didn’t know I had; that of “what the hell do I wear if I’m just standing around outside in October and I don’t want to wear sneakers?” Sneakers are life but there’s only so much yachting I can do in KSwift’s. Tested a good pair through a legitimately cold morning practice last month. Not by wearing them to coach of course (unless you count running around reloading the hoses for water breaks on a Friday morning coaching spring ball.) by walking the field before and after in them, and they were fantastic. Cold air? Check. Light mud? Check. Frost on the ground? I hosed them down and they still looked fine. My low tops have never ever shown signs of water damage, these did the same. Low bar I know, but holy shit do shoes fail this test.
Speaking of low tops, the retro running style is back…sort of. Almost wrote this one off completely until a friend of mine who actually runs recommended I try a newer pair out because the old ones I bought were just garbage. Did just that. Headed home after a lift last week and ran two miles in them on a whim, nothing serious I wasn’t training for or anything. But my foot felt just as good when I stopped as it did when I started, no build up of that dead spot under my heel at the end like my old pair started doing after about a mile and a half.
I think I wrote those off because of bad purchase back in ‘22 but the style itself is fine guys, at least when it comes to Adidas and their summer originals. It was that particular model was cut cost on foam and swung a fat price tag.
All of these are obviously choices I made because I can wear them to the gym if I want to. They’re not gonna blow anyone’s mind if you wear them someplace other than Target. But if you’re looking for stuff that’s actually in style right now AND good. They check both those boxes. Will they stay that way? As I said above, probably not. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it while it’s here.
Connor coaches rugby in Bristol and has never quite stopped training. He writes about kit that copes with a proper session and still looks fine on a Saturday, and he won’t recommend anything he hasn’t sweated in first.
