Is high fashion to blame for the possible death of sneaker culture? A reflection about a bubble we might see popping

In the latest discourse of the fashion industry, speculations have been made questioning whether the bubble of sneaker culture is coming to an end. Following Balenciaga’s well-accepted release of their Triple S sneakers last year, everyone else seems to have been jumping on the sneaker bandwagon in aim of creating the next ‘it-sneaker’. The past few runway seasons have experienced a posse of ravenous commercial designers complementing their luxury collections with trendy and at times quite strange sneaker designs in hope of breaking into the newly re-discovered sneaker market. Louis Vuitton presented their collection with a version of the chunky sneaker, so did Gucci and Prada with a neon design, some of which have actually turned out to be best-sellers. However there were brands like Versace and Escada who seemed to have presented their collection with sneakers simply because they had to, without any thought of design or practicality involved. This is where the problem began, prior to this sneaker-craze phase, luxury fashion house’s such as these would never dare to make these shoes one of their major marketing points unless it was the release of a capsule collection.

This isn’t at all to say that sneakers will disappear, however in this case it could start with a bunch of different sneakers being sold at their original values, without enough interested consumers to bring it complete profit for every brand. Then it could slowly result to the discounting of prices, which is what risks the decline of the overall market value and the aggregate demand. This is only a fraction of the possibility of what it could look like following this sneaker peak. If things get really bad, the sneaker industry could resemble Vetements’ great death after their peak in 2015 where prices were significantly slashed as a result of low sales, but one can only hope it will never get to that drastic point.