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.”
At the start of “Mile End Kicks,” a film set in the Montreal indie music scene of 2011, a music critic in her early 20s, played by Barbie Ferreira, has arrived at her Craigslist apartment share fresh from Toronto. She’s promptly invited to a loft party by her Quebecois D.J. roommate. “Dress hot,” she’s told.
The camera scans the critic, Grace Pine, as she walks into the night. Brown lace-up brogues. Black socks over sheer black tights. A short burgundy corduroy skirt. A navy sweater with a white collar peeking out. A denim boyfriend jacket to finish the look. Hot? Depends on whom you ask.
“It’s a punchline to a joke in the script,” Courtney Mitchell, the film’s costume designer, said in an interview. “But there’s a genuine understanding to some audience members where that is what we felt sexy in, in a kind of nerdcore way.”
Montreal as an indie sleaze epicenter
“Mile End Kicks,” written and directed by Chandler Levack, is the semi-autobiographical story of a music writer who moves to the Mile End neighborhood of Montreal in the summer of 2011, a time when rents were cheap enough that artists could afford to live blocks from the venues where they played.
Ostensibly, she’s there to write a book about Alanis Morissette’s album “Jagged Little Pill.” But other items on her to-do list, such as “have actual sex,” take precedence, leading her to loft parties, poetry readings and a love triangle with members of the fictional band Bone Patrol.
The era, called “indie sleaze” in retrospect (but referred to as “hipster” by those who were there), with its messy, gritty-glam looks, is captured extensively in the film. “I never felt as free a dresser as I did when I lived in Montreal,” Levack said in an interview.
Head-to-toe in American Apparel
The clothing brand most closely associated with indie sleaze is American Apparel. Think deep V-neck tees, ’70s-inspired separates and ads featuring young women splayed in suggestive poses. “I was always digging something lamé out of my butt crack,” Levack said, not without a twinge of nostalgia.
To recreate the vibe, Mitchell collected more than 200 garments and accessories from the brand, including high-waisted jean shorts, shiny disco shorts, hoodies, bodysuits, rompers, bandeaus, oversized tees, jelly shoes and belts. She was adamant that the items date from 2011 or earlier to reflect that they had been in the wardrobe rotation for some years. She found them on a mix of resale sites including Facebook Marketplace, Poshmark and Craigslist, as well as at one Montreal dry cleaner that happened to have a trove of American Apparel dead stock.
And there was a personal history, too: Mitchell had worked at American Apparel stores while in high school and in college, and Ferreira modeled for the brand in 2012, when she was 16. They shared a deep familiarity with the clothes. “That really brings out an emotion, when you return to a beloved silhouette,” Mitchell said.
Homage to the ironic graphic tee
An ironic T-shirt coupled with a cardigan became a totem of indie style, thanks to icons like Kurt Cobain, who served as inspiration for Bone Patrol’s lead singer, Chevy (Stanley Simons). At his day job selling shoes at Mile End Kicks (a real store), he wears a plaid mohair cardigan over a pocket T-shirt emblazoned with “Time to Be Happy” in off-kilter print. “The slogan was Chevy’s tongue-in-cheek nod to his retail job,” Mitchell wrote in an email. “As if he is wearing a salesman costume while dying inside because he is ‘a real artist.’”
Two of the shirts worn by Grace belonged to Levack: a Spin magazine shirt she got as a summer intern at the publication, and a Sonic Youth baseball tee from a 2007 show at McCarren Pool, then an abandoned public swimming hole in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. But the runaway star is merch from a vacuum store, La Maison de l’Aspirateur, in Mile End — a black shirt with a hoovering elephant logo worn by Archie (Devon Bostick), the lead guitarist. “It’s become an iconic shirt for the film,” Levack said. “I’m going to screenings and people in the audience are wearing the shirts.”
Hidden gems found in vintage piles
In the Mile End of 2011, vintage clothing was a fact of life for reasons of style and necessity, and it became core to the hipster aesthetic. “These aren’t characters that are buying clothes; they’re, like, finding them in the street and rummaging through the giant clothing pile at Eva B,” Levack said, referring to a Montreal vintage institution.
One of Chevy’s most lurid onstage looks is a shimmering shot silk women’s trench — worn over a pair of American Apparel briefs, of course — courtesy of Renaissance, a chain of thrift stores in Quebec. “Everyone at those shows, whether or not you were onstage or not, you felt like you were onstage,” Levack said. “People would dress up to be noticed and to outdo each other. But it was so creative because nobody had any money.”
Pete Yorn moved to Los Angeles almost exactly 30 years ago.
“I remember it was May 16, 1996 — maybe three weeks after I graduated from Syracuse,” says the singer and songwriter known for his smart, tender folk-rock stylings. “Which means I’ve lived here longer than anywhere else. But when people ask where I’m from, I still say I’m from New Jersey.” He laughs. “I guess I identify very strongly with my upbringing.”
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.
Jersey pride notwithstanding, Yorn’s 2001 debut album, “Musicforthemorningafter,” is suffused with his experiences as a young transplant moving and shaking in a busy L.A. social scene he compares now to Doug Liman’s classic “Swingers” movie — “at least if you take away the swing dancing,” he says. “But the driving around and the going to parties — it was all the same stuff.” (Yorn’s older brothers, Kevin and Rick, are both prominent players in the entertainment business.)
The singer, who’s 51, is on the road this year performing “Musicforthemorningafter” in its entirety to mark the LP’s 25th anniversary; he’s also playing songs from throughout the rest of his career, including a 2009 duo record he made with his friend Scarlett Johansson. On July 24, he’ll release his 12th studio album, “All the Beauty.” Here, he breaks down his routine for a Sunday in his adopted hometown with his wife, jewelry designer Beth Kaltman, and their 10-year-old daughter.
7 a.m. Rise and dine
I’m like a 6:45 or 7 wake up just because I’m used to driving my daughter to school every day. I like to eat right away, and I eat the same two things every day: either yogurt with frozen berries, or there’s this overnight oats called Mush. The blueberry Mush — I can’t get enough of it. That’s what I eat before my shows too. I’ll go to a venue and the people are like, “What would you like for dinner? We have this beautiful menu,” and I’m like, “I’ll just have the Mush.”
10 a.m. Horsing around
Sunday is usually a day for something with my daughter. She’s taken a love to horseback riding — she’s much braver than I am — so I’ll drive her out to this barn near Bell Canyon, which my wife told me is actually in Ventura County. I said, “No way — Ventura County is way up there.” And sure enough, there’s this southern tip of Ventura that’s like 25 minutes from my house up the 101. Anyway, I’ll go and I’ll watch her ride the horse. I’ll be honest — I’m very nervous every time. But my wife grew up horseback riding, and my daughter, she just loves it. She can be very fickle, but this is one thing that’s stuck.
Now, I should say: If it’s NFL season, I can’t skip football. I’m a huge Raiders fan — it’s terrible. So if there’s an important game, I’ll have my Sunday Ticket on my phone and peek at what’s going on. But that’s fine — it’s understood.
12 p.m. Retail therapy
After the horse, we might go this place in Van Nuys called Iceland. It’s ironic because my wife, her dream trip is to go to Iceland the country, and the closest we’re getting to that right now is an ice-skating rink. Or I love going to the Fashion Square mall [in Sherman Oaks] — I don’t know if it’s a remnant of growing up in New Jersey or it just gives me the nostalgic feeling of being with my parents at the mall. I don’t even have to buy anything. I mean, I might end up getting roped into buying something — not a Labubu because that’s over but some sort of kawaii animal stuffy. I just like that the mall still exists in a time when it’s so easy for everyone to buy everything on their phone. My daughter was like, “Whoa, you can go in and touch things?”
3 p.m. Guilty pleasure
Here’s a naughty one: There’s a little bakery right off Ventura Boulevard called Schazti’s, and they have this chocolate banana pudding that is ridiculous. It comes in a paper cup.
6 p.m. Time to dine
If it’s Football Night in America, my wife and daughter would order Japanese or Chinese or Thai. They’d probably order that every day if they had their way — they’re obsessed. Sometimes I’ll just eat a bowl of cereal and call it a night. If there’s no game, a cool place to go that’s been there forever is the Smoke House in Burbank. I’d always seen it but had never been until a few months ago. Just a classic, old-school place — steak is great.
10 p.m. Slow for show
I’m early to bed because I know I’m gonna be up early to drive my daughter to school, which is my favorite thing when I’m home. I don’t want to miss it. I’m very conscious of how fast she’s growing up, and I know me — I’ll be sad when it’s over. We might watch a show or a movie but I’ll feel my eyes getting heavy after like 10 minutes. It takes me quite a few nights to get through an episode.
Zoe Latta, a co-founder of the fashion brand Eckhaus Latta, saw the clock on Instagram and started searching for pharma swag on eBay. “It was just a hole I got in,” she said. Latta soon rounded up some examples at “Rotting on the Vine,” her Substack newsletter, describing them as “silly byproducts of our sick sad world.”
Pharma swag feels somewhat like Marlboro Man merch — “like this very specific modality of our culture that’s changed,” Latta said, adding, “At first, I thought it was ironic and cheeky. But it’s also so dark.”
In particular, swag like the OxyContin mugs that read “The One to Start With. The One to Stay With” is regarded as highly collectible and highly contentious. Jeremy Wells, a newspaper owner and editor in Olive Hill, Ky., remembered, for example, seeing the mugs sold at a Dollar Tree in New Boston, Ohio, in the late 1990s or early 2000s. “At the same moment that the epidemic is blowing up,” he said.
“You can do a chicken-and-egg argument, and I doubt very seriously that those mugs made anybody get addicted,” he said. “But I do feel like things like those mugs did add to the mystique and the aura of seduction.” (After a protracted lawsuit, Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, has been dissolved and is on the hook to pay more than $5 billion in criminal penalties for fueling the opioid epidemic.)
“I was surprised to see how much this stuff was selling for in general — there is demand,” Latta said, pointing to a vintage Xanax photo frame listed for $230. Latta said she could imagine buying it for a friend who takes Xanax on planes (“if it was at a thrift store for under $10”) or maybe a pair of Moderna aviator sunglasses that she found, which seem to nod at Covid vaccines and the signature Biden eyewear, she said.
Pharmacore — medical-branded pieces worn as fashion — has found new expression at the confluence of identity, medicine and commerce, and at a time when skepticism toward pharmaceuticals is at a high (see: the MAHA movement).
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