If the 2010s were the era of the hypebeast sneaker, the 2020s brought the fashion sneaker to the fore. In 2023, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Samba in your size at an Adidas store. The brand’s collaboration with Grace Wales Bonner sold out by the drop, with resale values above $700. Onitsuka Tigers and Puma Speedcats were paired with Khaite jeans and The Row coats. Brands from Bode to Jacquemus released sold-out Nike tie-ups. Then came the rise of brown suede sneakers, from Dries Van Noten’s fashion-favourites to Miu Miu’s New Balance collab.
This fashion month signalled a shift — not on the runway, but on the feet of show-goers. Editors noted very few sneaker looks on show attendees, as themselves and buyers — who notoriously dress in comfortable enough footwear to run from show to show — swapped sneakers for alternative footwear, whether ballet flats, loafers or boots. Is the sneaker’s status as a fashion item waning?
It’s a sign of the times. Though the Spring/Summer 2026 runways still featured their fair share of sneakers — from Nike providing footwear at Diotima, Kallmeyer and Lii, to Julian Klausner offering up a fresh (and much praised) Dries sneaker — off the runway, the category has seen a decline. In her 5 Things You Should Buy Substack, writer Becky Malinsky observed less teens in her neighbourhood pairing sneakers with their school uniforms — a “sure sign” of their waning favour, she wrote.
The data reinforces these observations. Sambas — the epitome of sneakers-as-fashion — peaked in April 2024, with 7.3 million monthly searches, per data-driven fashion forecasting account Style Analytics. It’s now at five million monthly searches — a 32 per cent decrease. Overall, Pinterest searches for the term “sneaker outfit” have levelled off over the past two years in the US, the UK, Australia and Canada. This sneaker fatigue is indeed being driven by the youth, notes Style Analytics founder Molly Rooyakkers: searches for “sneaker outfits” are now driven more by 25 to 34-year-olds than 18 to 24-year-olds. In the US, 50 per cent of those searching for “sneaker outfits” fall into the 25 to 34 age group, versus 30 per cent aged 18 to 24. Rooyakkers notes a similar pattern across related search terms like “Sambas” or “Samba outfit”, which also skew older.
Rooyakkers has been anticipating this shift for some time. “I made a video back in 2023 predicting that there would be no more trending sneakers in 2024 and people were pretty mad about it at the time,” she says. Her logic was simple: there were more interesting — and trending — footwear options emerging outside of the sneaker category, including ballet flats, boots, loafers and Mary Janes. The following year did wind up in sneaker hype, with the likes of Dries Van Noten’s suede style and the Miu Miu x New Balance 530 SL (plus, Sambas peaked), but in 2025, it seems Rooyakkers’s prediction has come to pass.
It’s a moment of recalibration for the sneaker market, says Lucila Saldana, footwear and accessories strategist at trend forecaster WGSN. In the US, sneakers are projected to decline in mix share for AW26, per WGSN. The UK market is currently plateauing.
Today, there are even more high-vis alternatives to sneakers than there were even a year or two ago. Footwear is getting freakier as consumers get more experimental with comfortable options that are more exciting than your average style. Rooyakkers flags shoe trends such as flip flops, Tabi-everything, Vibram FiveFingers (and other barefoot shoes) and the ballet flat’s continued reign as key disruptors to sneakers’s long-standing dominance. Hybrid sneakers are also emerging as an alternative, and people are getting more dressed up, in a subtle pushback to the post-pandemic athleisure boom.
It presents a conundrum for brands who have long relied on sneakers as an entry point for consumers who wouldn’t splurge on their ready-to-wear or more occasion-led shoes. For years, styles from Gucci’s Ace sneaker to Balenciaga’s Triple S to Isabel Marant’s ever-controversial sneaker wedge have dominated spaces like shopping streets and school hallways.
Of course, sneakers will always have a place in our wardrobes. (Matthieu Blazy took his bow for his Chanel debut in a pair of Nikes.) But now, as Gen Zs on TikTok denounce the sneaker as no longer stylish, and as office-goers opt for more creative alternatives, will brands need to shift their approach to the footwear style?
More newness, less hype
Part of the problem is simply a lack of newness and innovation in the sneaker category. “There are not a lot of interesting mainstream sneaker choices right now,” Rooyakkers says, noting that the slim suede sneaker (originally the Sambas, now Dries and Miu Miu) are feeling played out. She also thinks it will be a “very long time” before chunkier styles make a comeback.
Price is another consideration: product costs are increasing as quality and innovation backslide, meaning brands need to do more to convince shoppers their goods are worthwhile. “Luxury product price hikes and low perception of added value is something that segment of the industry needs to address generally, especially when it comes to an everyday, entry-level buy like a pair of sneakers,” says Emily Gordon-Smith, content director of trends intelligence agency Stylus. “What sets them apart as being truly luxury? Where’s the craftsmanship?”
Consumers want styles that feel fresh. Where sneaker drops used to be the epicentre of generating desire, the hype cycle has seemingly died down. “We’re squarely in the post-hype-drop phase now, and if you know anything about how influence moves, it always flows from the niche outwards,” says Omone Ugbome, strategist at female-led creative consultancy Pacer.
This is why more niche styles are the exception to the current decline. Pinterest searches in the US for “Nike Shox” (a style Martine Rose has collaborated on) have grown 431 per cent year-on-year, per Style Analytics, which tracks a similar pattern in the UK (+86 per cent) and Canada (+166 per cent). Rooyakkers flags that these styles are yet to reach the mainstream success of a shoe like the Samba. Nike Shox have an average of 1.2 million monthly worldwide searches, while Adidas Sambas remain at the five million mark, down from their seven million peak. Perhaps this is exactly why they’re seeing the growth they are — they haven’t yet reached the point of oversaturation. This, too, is driven by the next generation; Nike Shox overindex in the 18 to 24 category, which makes up 55 per cent of searches, per Style Analytics.
To this end, brands can no longer rely solely on collaborations and new colourways, Ugbome says. But collabs can still hit — just look at the still selling out tie-ups between Adidas and Wales Bonner. The peak average resale price for Adidas x Wales Bonner sneakers was $314 in 2024, with an average price premium of 74 per cent. (Price premium is a measure of how much more an item is selling for on StockX compared to its original retail price.) So far, the 2025 average is lower, at $260, with a price premium of 27 per cent. “While the latest collections don’t quite drive the same sky-high premiums and secondary market demand we saw in 2024, Wales Bonner still remains one of the most notable Adidas collaborators of recent years,” says Brendan Dunne, senior director of customer community and engagement at StockX.
The latest Nike x Jacquemus campaign did exceptionally well, generating $3 million in media impact value (MIV) during its first week of launch, per Launchmetrics. The top-performing post was on Jacquemus’s TikTok, doubling as one of the brand’s top three performing owned media posts of 2025. The video generated $655,000 in MIV — fourfold what the brand typically generates through its TikTok content. (MIV is the monetary value of posts, article mentions and social media interactions.)
The shoes are a re-release of the Nike Moon Shoe, which hasn’t been in production since the ’70s. The revival has generated praise, but experts say the approach is getting old. “Brands need to tap into something deeper, whether that’s genuine innovation in comfort technology, or storytelling that resonates with how people actually live now,” Ugbome says. “The brands that will win are the ones that make sneakers feel essential again without relying on hype. That might mean leaning into craft, hyper-specific communities, or silhouettes that actually create ease rather than just reference the archive for the millionth time.”
The active-ication of footwear
Stylus is crediting this lack of newness, in part, to a diversification of athletic-adjacent footwear — as opposed to a lesser number of sneakers, says Gordon-Smith. “We’re seeing a broader active-ication in footwear,” she adds.
‘Snoafers’ were an early example of this metamorphosis, though trending styles now often veer closer to ballet flats. “The ballet-flat-ification of sneakers is in full swing,” Ugbome says, referencing styles from Puma, New Balance and Adidas. “That’s exactly why we’re seeing more hybrid sneakers flooding the market, whether it’s the new Ganni x New Balance [snoafer] or Onitsuka ballerinas.” Retail arrivals of this ‘sneakerina’ style have been up 111 per cent year-on-year for the past three months, per EDITED. Krista Corrigan, senior retail analyst at EDITED, notes that luxury brands might be leading the way on design and investment, but it’s the sportswear and mass-market labels offering the trend at more attainable prices that’s furthering adoption.
Ugbome reads the rise of hybrid sneakers as a response to this cultural moment. “Mary Jane sneakers and all these genre-blurring silhouettes are telling us that people want the ease of a sneaker without the chaos of sneaker culture,” she says. “The hybrid moment is about collapsing categories because rigid definitions don’t serve how people actually dress or live anymore. It’s the same reason why [Margiela] Tabi dupes are everywhere and why brands are experimenting with closures that aren’t traditional lacing.”
These styles also better align with how people want to dress in 2025. “Fashion feels a bit more dressed up again, partly as a progression of post-pandemic trends like the rise of officewear,” Rooyakkers says. My colleagues can attest. “I wear my MM6 x Salomons that are like Mary Janes occasionally for work stuff and shows,” senior trends editor Lucy Maguire tells me. “But I wouldn’t wear a regular sneaker necessarily.”
In the sneaker space, experts say this is, indeed, where most newness can come in, and that brands should be innovating beyond traditional silhouettes. There’s demand for styles other than sneakers, including flats and boots, but there’s also a gap in the market for athletic-style footwear that doesn’t necessarily translate to sports.
This hybridity is a signal of where sneaker culture is heading, Ugbome says. “There’s a whole generation of consumers who want sneakers that reflect their actual lives rather than a manufactured hype cycle [that] they’re disconnected from.”
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