Here's What Comes After Ugly Sneakers

After the Triple S, Balenciaga bets big on...hiking shoes?

When it comes to sneakers, the most dominant aesthetic movement of the past year or so can be summed up in one word.

Ugly.

And there’s no doubt that the brand that made it all possible, is Balenciaga. Specifically their chunky, clunky, beefed-up, built-out, high-end dad-core, meme-able, rip-off-able style the Triple S.

But fashion dies on the old, so the new ugly sneaker is here, once again courtesy of Balenciaga’s creative director, Demna Gvasalia. While we foresaw this moment when these bad boys hit the runway earlier this year, we’ve now got an official release date: September 24th.

The Balenciaga Track is Gvasalia’s latest footwear design to be somehow both hideous and immediately covetable. It borrows heavily from the visual language of track and hiking shoes, once thought to be the nadir of good taste but now, thanks to these and and an endorsement from fashun gawd Ralph Lauren, are primed to be the hottest shoe of the season.

Gvasalia’s version features an exaggerated tread, layers of overlapping, color-clashing protective panels, and hulking, built-out sole which extends out at the heel. And while it’s a more streamlined silhouette than the Triple S, it still has that aggressive design ethos and, in its way, a meta sense of humor about itself. It’s a shoe but it’s also a dare: Can you pull this off? You probably can’t but you’ll want it all the same.

Anyway, expect this to be on the feet of every cool guy and wants-to-be-cool guy this fall, all over street style shots, all over your feed, all over your mind man. It comes in five colorways for men, from the relatively reserved all-white and all-black, to the pop-ier, fantastical orange and green versions. They’ll cost you $895 and drop on the Balenciaga site come Monday. We’re sure other retailers will have them, too, but you better act fast—they sell out quick and are hard to come by.


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