All products featured on Vogue are independently selected by our editors. However, we may earn affiliate revenue on this article and commission when you buy something.
Reports of the death of sneakers have been greatly exaggerated. Sneaker sales are said to be down this year, and yet everywhere you look, everyone’s wearing Adidas Sambas. The humble soccer shoes enjoyed a sort of It status in the ’90s and have recently staged a comeback on the feet of our most stylish mononymous celebs (Hailey, Gigi, Bella, Kaia, EmRata). But that’s not the whole story.
In fact, summer 2023 belongs to a slew of very hard-to-get sneaker collaborations between independent female designers and sportswear giants. The British designer Grace Wales Bonner released her first collaboration with Adidas in fall 2020, and each subsequent release has only risen in popularity. In fact, I think she’s at least partly responsible for the Samba renaissance, as it’s a style she’s been remixing since that first collaboration.
Buying limited-edition collabs requires an attitude of que será, será; you make a note on your calendar, you prepare to log on to a website at a determined time, but whether or not that results in a purchase is completely up to a higher power. Interestingly, the Wales Bonner Adidas collections had not been completely impossible to purchase until the arrival in June of the spring 2023 metallic silver Sambas with beige crochet embroidery, which the whole world was seemingly waiting for. Friends set alarms to wake up at 4 a.m.—their sale time was appropriately UK based—but it somehow proved not early enough. It was like the sneakers came into the world already sold out.
The silver Wales Bonner Adidas became not only the shoes of the summer but also status symbols—a sign that the wearer has taste, sure, but also access: access to someone who can facilitate a purchase or to really incredible online technology that can beat the bots at the time of purchase. (Other styles from the collection are indeed still available for purchase, but of course everyone just wants the silver.)
July arrived and with it the Danish designer Cecilie Bahnsen’s turn to break people’s hearts. Featuring black or silver Mary Jane–style sneakers embellished with floral patterns in stamped leather and mesh, her collaboration with Asics debuted at her fall 2023 collection in Paris, but it flew a bit under the radar. I had noticed them on the runway back in March and made a mental note to check back in later in the season. Then one morning I logged onto Matches and there they were, on sale but not actually available—overnight they had dropped and immediately sold out. A few weeks later, another drop and once again both colorways were completely sold out by the time I got the page to load. This was shaping up to be an impossible task.
I wasn’t expecting a fashion moment when the Women’s World Cup began late last week until I saw pictures of the US National Team decked out in Martine Rose’s collaboration with Nike, the second after its wildly successful debut last year. The team’s slick navy suits were anchored by the designer’s latest take on the Shox, which she reworked into square-toe mules in bright blue and purple or neon yellow and orange—a style that was borderline ugly and therefore immediately my obsession. Last season my attempt to purchase a pair was unsuccessful—I managed to add them to cart, but they sold out by the time I clicked to finish my purchase. Seeing the shoes on Megan Rapinoe’s feet I thought, Well, I definitely won’t be able to get my hands on them now.
On Tuesday, the sale date arrived and I braced for another exercise in futility. The shoes were supposed to go on sale at 9 a.m., and at 8:45 a.m. I checked my email and noticed a message from the Martine Rose store had arrived about half an hour before—the styles were now available. Cursing myself for committing the cardinal sin of not checking my email for a full 30 minutes, I clicked on the link only to prove to myself that they were already sold out. Except somehow they weren’t, and my size was still available. I’ve never clicked to purchase something quicker in my life—except for maybe the time I was hunting down a Telfar bag. It seems perhaps I have finally achieved the impossible—I bought a new pair of sneakers.
