Archive silhouettes are the latest sneaker game obsession Yesterday's sneakers to reimagine the future
Between re-editions, new versions or simply reiterations, the nostalgia factor has become one of the main drivers of the sneaker game. While brands are scrambling to bring old more or less known silhouettes back to life, collectors have begun to give more prestige to collecting and archive, pulling little-known sneakers out of the closet to rethink the future of the sneaker game. Halfway between the educational purpose and the pure business, pages such as Obscure Sneakers, adisight and Curation Education Sales are the ideal meeting point between old and new, sharing (and often selling) rare and forgotten sneakers.
It is precisely the hype culture the point of origin of this phenomenon, the Big Bang that has given rise to the desire to go beyond that wall of weekly releases that now dominates the industry. Interviewed by Complex, Lil Yachty, rapper but above all collector, had talked about his desire to discover and look for forgotten sneakers as an antidote to a world of releases in which hype prevails over originality. Nothing new, if not the natural reaction to a sneaker game firmly fixed on his few certainties, reworking the same silhouettes with minimal design and colour variations without being able to offer anything really new to fans. If the past can teach us anything, if pages like Obscure Sneakers or adisight can tell us anything, it's the importance and richness of the archives not only for fashion brands but also for sneaker brands. If Stone Island and Moncler seem to have understood this, now it's up to Nike and adidas to do it, transforming phenomena such as the sneaker archive into a weapon to shape the future of an industry that could unexpectedly find in the past the key to its future.
