The sneaker industry has been in a funk all summer, but with the fall fashion season kicking off this week in New York, brands are beginning to tout their next big ideas.
And those ideas appear to be quite similar: The white tennis shoe is coming back.
On Tuesday, Nike and Reebok announced lifestyle sneaker collaborations with the designer brands Kallmeyer and Celine, respectively. Both collaborations offer a luxury imprint on a classic lifestyle shoe: for Nike, its Tennis Centre sneaker, and for Reebok, its Freestyle Lo.
Those collaborations, releasing this week, come on the heels of Adidas executives detailing plans to revive the Stan Smith tennis shoe beginning this fall. Speaking in July about the tennis shoe’s revival, Adidas chief executive Bjørn Gulden said, “We have big indications from fashion shows, from consumer groups, from research that this direction is coming.”
It’s not unusual for sneaker brands to align in a similar direction simultaneously. Just three months ago, the major shoe companies outfitting World Cup players each chose a shocking shade of pink for their soccer cleats. But the parallels in Nike, Adidas and Reebok’s visions for lifestyle footwear come at a dire moment for the industry, with fashion-oriented footwear selling poorly. In August, Dick’s Sporting Goods cut its earnings forecast at subsidiary retailer Foot Locker for the rest of this year, saying lifestyle shoes simply aren’t resonating with consumers and will continue to sour through the holiday season.
In a response to questions regarding its lifestyle footwear strategy, a Nike spokesman pointed to the company’s press release about the Kallmeyer collaboration, which said the designer “brings a new perspective” to the existing Tennis Centre shoe. Spokespeople for Adidas and Reebok didn’t respond to requests for comment.
To be sure, the Nike x Kallmeyer and Reebok x Celine shoes aren’t expected to be distributed at mass retail, instead targeted toward select high-end boutiques and the companies’ own stores and websites.
Adidas said it will deploy a similar strategy with the Stan Smith. “Remember, when we are testing things, what we do is that we are launching products at the higher end in limited quantities,” Gulden told investors on the same July earnings call, adding that they then measure demand in important taste-making markets before scaling up their supply.
“Stan Smith has always been a product that when it goes, it actually goes global,” he said, “normally driven first [in] Europe, then going to Asia and then less, of course, to a certain target group in the U.S., although right now, ironically, the higher end in the U.S. has actually been very strong in demand.
Indeed, the French fashion house Celine first teased its collaboration shoe with Reebok at its menswear runway show in June, according to WWD, before unveiling the full campaign this week. In addition to classic white, the sneaker will be available in seven other colors beginning Thursday. Paris-based Celine is owned by the luxury conglomerate LVMH.
Kallmeyer, an independent fashion brand founded by New York City-based designer Daniella Kallmeyer, has dressed WNBA coaches and hosted pop-up events with Nike, but the Tennis Centre sneaker is the first product collaboration, according to Vogue.