Lifestyle
What Happened to the Bulky Sneaker? They Are Getting Smaller
After years of the ever bigger, ever bulkier sneaker, there seems to be bit of a backlash: Sneakers have become sleek, streamlined and, in a word, skinny.
“There was a shift, I think it was in the fall of 2023, where you saw a lot more Sambas on the street, with that slick sole,” said Federico Barassi, the vice president of men’s wear at the Canadian e-commerce site SSENSE, citing the popular Adidas style. “People started to have some fatigue with those big bubble-y, older sneakers.”
Recent runways were awash with aerodynamic and attenuated versions, from Prada’s slipper-like Collapse sneaker with its elasticized foot opening ($975) to Dries Van Noten’s suede sneakers ($475) that referenced 1970s running shoes. Ganni is offering little ballerina lace-ups ($495), while Maison Margiela has released a flattened and cleated riff ($820) on its own popular Replica style. Miu Miu, the reigning cool girl brand, recently released the low-profile Plume ($895), an elegant entrant into the slim sneaker canon.
Larger sportswear brands have picked up on this sylphlike silhouette. Puma brought its classic Speedcat, first introduced in 1999, out of retirement last summer, while Adidas revived its svelte Taekwondo and Tokyo models. Nike is resurrecting the Total 90 III, with a futuristic feel and off-kilter laces, this spring and summer; in late-January the designer Jacquemus sent the horizontally inclined Moon Shoe, a track sneaker introduced in 1972, down his runway as part of a collaboration with the company. In addition to a smaller, sleeker appearance, these styles often have a smooth, tapered profile, akin to a bullet. Or, as GQ recently named them, “torpedo sneakers.”
“It really benefits the big brands that have been around for long enough to have shoes from those eras like the 1960s and 1970s,” said Brendan Dunne, who heads up sneaker coverage at Complex and who also name-checked the Samba’s popularity as a catalyst for the current movement. “One of the interesting things happening in sneaker consumption right now is the rise of brands like On or Hoka taking market share from big brands. And if you think about the slim sneaker trend, I don’t think On or Hoka can participate in that because they’re all about techy shoes and shoes that just have a little bit more girth to them.”
In keeping with fashion’s cyclical nature, these shoes can be seen as a pendulum swing away from what came before, best exemplified by Balenciaga’s influential Triple S sneaker. That shoe, with its built-up sole, created a mania for brawnier footwear and led to the popularity of “dad sneakers” from brands such as New Balance and Asics. In a quest for newness, brands are now countering with slender designs. (Balenciaga, it should be noted, has remained dedicated to its bigger-is-better approach.)
These footwear offerings are also a reaction to the changing cut in ready-to-wear, namely the looser clothing silhouettes dominating apparel, seen particularly in the rise of fuller, relaxed-cut trousers. “Skinny pants and jeans are fading away,” Mr. Barassi said. “And you can style these with the wider trousers, and bell-bottoms, that are trending right now.”
Wide-legged pants are gaining so much traction that they’ve even infiltrated the formal wear category, as demonstrated by flashier dressers like Colman Domingo, Omar Apollo and Robert Downey Jr. at last week’s Academy Awards ceremony.
“The shape of the shoes and the shape of the pants we wear, there’s this inverse correlation,” Mr. Dunne said. “Look back eight years ago when every rapper was wearing skinny jeans and gigantic Balenciaga trainers. Now it’s the other way around: slim, low silhouettes and gigantic pants.”
Additionally, these shoes build upon the already crowded overlap between sport and fashion. They’re leveraging activities like martial arts, rock climbing, wrestling and even the enduring popularity of ballet slippers.
“There’s all these adjacent gorpcore shoes, or low-pro shoes, that put us in this zone,” Mr. Dunne said. “I think of something like the popularity of the Salomon XT-6, which isn’t in this same zone, necessarily, but it sets us up, it bridges the gap between the chunky shoe and this.”
These sneakers also faintly recall the popular shoes of the Y2K era, a now-mythical pre-internet time that continues to cast a spell on younger generations.
“I remember the Prada America’s Cup, everyone wanted that sneaker,” Mr. Barassi said of the brand’s futuristic patent leather and technical mesh sneaker introduced in 1997. “And it had this thinner profile.”
Torben Schumacher, who oversees Adidas Originals, the fashion and lifestyle division of the company, said that once the company noticed the popularity of its Samba and the Gazelle styles, it began to search for new models to resurrect from its archives. Ultimately, it landed on the Tokyo and Taekwondo.
“The latter was designed for martial-arts athletes in the 2000s, but one look at the shoe and you can immediately envision it on a runway or city street,” Mr. Schumacher wrote in an email. Still, Mr. Schumacher wrote that, regardless of the cultural factors leading us to this moment, perhaps the most compelling reason to wear a slim shoe was the most straightforward: “There’s a sense of effortlessness to these low profile styles — both in style and in function.”
Phil Pritchard of the Hockey Hall of Fame works the 2019 NHL Awards at the Mandalay Bay Events Center on June 19, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
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The Don Vs The Poppa; World’s Worst Doctor; Should We Eat That?
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Peter talks to Phil Pritchard, the NHL’s Keeper of the Stanley Cup. Phil plays our game called, “Let’s Go Visit The NHL” Three questions about National Historic Landmarks.
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Paul W. Downs can’t help it that even on the weekends, his life intersects with “Hacks,” the HBO comedy he co-created and co-showruns with his wife, Lucia Aniello, and their friend Jen Statsky. (He also appears on the show as Jimmy LuSaque Jr., the besieged manager of its two stars, played by Emmy winners Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder.) The fifth and final season of “Hacks” premiered last week, but on Downs’ days off, he often finds himself at its previous filming locations or hanging out with cast members who have become like family.
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
Downs moved to Los Angeles in 2011, but soon after, he and Aniello were hired to write (and for him to act) on the über-New York show “Broad City,” keeping them away from the West Coast for years. Now the couple live in Los Feliz, which they enjoy with their young son.
“I love Los Feliz because it’s a real neighborhood with restaurants and bars, but also feels close to nature with Griffith Park,” Downs says. “Also it’s very central to my Eastside friends and Westside agents.”
And if he had to live at a local mall, like the character Ava Daniels did in the third season of “Hacks,” which would he choose?
“It would be the Americana, obviously.”
Here’s how he’d spend a perfect day in L.A.
10 a.m.: A late rise and a li’l barista
I’m sleeping in if I can, which I can’t because I have a toddler, but let’s say I can sleep ’til 10. That would be insane.
Then I’m making coffee at home. I’m making it with my 4-year-old because he likes to make my coffee now. He always wanted to help, now he really wants to do it on his own. I’m still there to supervise, but he does do a lot of it.
I do batch brew. I’m doing Verve Coffee that I’m grinding there, and then I’m brewing four cups because I need my coffee. I had a Moccamaster for a long time, but I recently got a Simply Good Coffee. There’s no plastic — it’s all glass and metal.
11 a.m.: Chocolate croissants for everyone
We’re driving to Pasadena and we’re going to [Artisanal Goods by] CAR, which is the place to get the best chocolate croissant, I think, in the world. I don’t just think in L.A., I think they’re better than Paris. I’m going there with my wife and my kid and I’m having another coffee and some pastry. We’re ordering three [chocolate croissants]. We’re not doubling up.
11:45 a.m.: The family business
We’re driving to Fair Oaks in Pasadena. There’s a place called T.L. Gurley. We shot “Hacks” there, actually. Not only in Season 1, but also full circle in Season 5. We’re going to shmay around and look at antiques. My kid is going to want to play a vintage pinball machine. We’re going to find a little piece of art for the house or what have you. It’s not necessarily that I’m on the hunt. It’s to pass the time and to have some fun. If I could do anything and have a leisurely day and take my mind off work, that’s what I’m doing.
People love to interact with my kid when he’s there. We’re really training him to appraise things at a young age. My parents are part-time dealers of antiques. My grandmother bought and sold antiques. It’s kind of a family business.
1:30 pm.: Baguettes and books
We’re driving to Larchmont and we’re getting a sandwich at Larchmont Village Wine, Spirits & Cheese. I’m doing prosciutto-mozzarella-basil on a baguette.
Then we’re going to Chevalier’s Books. What’s sad is that I’m often not looking for leisure material. I’m looking for something that I’m interested in learning more about or writing about, or that they’re turning into a show I want to audition for. But we’re also doing Little Golden Books for my son. He’s obsessed. We’re not huge on screen time, so we really encourage the book-buying.
2:30 p.m.: Cast pool party
We’re having some family fun in the pool and we’re doing that until evening. We invite people over all the time. My sister-in-law is a New Yorker, but she actually wrote last season on “The Rooster” and she’s often writing on shows in L.A., so she’s often here and she’ll have a couple friends come over. I know this sounds like a piece of PR or something, but we’ll really literally have Hannah [Einbinder] and maybe Mark Indelicato from “Hacks” come over to swim. Jen, our co-creator of “Hacks,” will come over.
6:00 p.m.: Family dinner
Sometimes we’ll order Grá to the house, which is a pizza place in Echo Park — excellent sourdough crust pizza. But if we don’t do that, an ideal evening is an early dinner at All Time on Hillhurst in Los Feliz. We’re ordering the ceviche and my son is having all of it and not sharing with anybody at the table.
8:45 p.m.: A thrilling ending to the day
After putting my kid to bed, my wife and I, in an ideal world (full disclosure: we haven’t done this in two years), we’ll watch something together that we’ve been meaning to watch. We have a long list of movies and we either want to revisit or that we haven’t seen that we need to watch.
We don’t watch a lot of comedies. It’s a dream to watch a “Black Bag” or a little espionage thriller. We really like that because it’s so different than the stuff that we’re working on in the day.
Often the things we watch are things that we admire. We like deconstructing it as fans of film and television. We do like talking about the making of it, but it’s less of a critique and more of a listing of the things we appreciated about it.
10:30 p.m.: No work tomorrow
And then it’s lovemaking ’til morning on a perfect Sunday. If it’s a perfect Sunday, there’s also a Monday that’s off.
Jay (not pictured) found himself alone and hopeless in a jail cell when a fellow inmate’s unexpected words of comfort changed his life.
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When Jay was 22 years old, he was a self-described loner. In this story, he is being identified by his nickname to allow himself to speak candidly about the following experience and his mental health. He says the few people he did hang out with at the time had questionable morals.
”I chose my friends poorly, and your friends have a tendency to rub off on you. And so I started making poor decisions,” Jay said.
One evening, when he and his friends were out drinking, someone suggested they should try to break into the chemistry building on his college campus. Most of the group shrugged the suggestion off, deeming it impossible, but Jay was convinced he could pull it off.
“The next night I made a plan of how to do it, and I did it,” Jay remembered. “And I didn’t get caught doing it, [but] I got caught afterwards.”
At around 1 that morning, Jay was placed in the county detention center. Sitting alone in his cell, reality began to sink in.
“I pretty much thought that my life as I knew it was going to be over, and I had decided that the world would be better off without me in it.”
Jay made a plan to end his life. As he prepared himself, he began to cry.
“But just in that moment when I was ready to do it, I heard a voice coming from the top left corner of my cell, from a little vent. And someone called out to me and said, ‘Hey, is this your first time?’”
The man who called out was an inmate in the cell next door.
“I collected myself a little bit, and I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Can I pray for you?’”
Jay had grown up religious, but had stopped going to church years before. In that moment, though, he knew he needed support. He said yes, and listened as the man began to pray.
“I wish I could tell you that I remember the [exact] words that he said to me, but what I remember is that his words landed with me, and instead of wanting my life to be over, suddenly I saw hope,” Jay said.
The interaction happened nearly ten years ago, but it was a pivotal moment in Jay’s life, and one he thinks about all the time.
“[Now], I have a good job. I have a girlfriend who loves me. I have a life. But I have a life because somebody who was in the same situation I was in had the courage to talk to a fellow inmate and be kind.”
Jay says that he wishes he could meet that man again and express his appreciation.
“[I would] shake that guy’s hand, give him a hug, and tell him what his small gesture meant for me, how he changed the course of my life.”
My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.
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