What does it mean that the Balenciaga bag has become a sneaker? The City Sneaker is exactly what it sounds like: it’s Balenciaga's most famous bag turned into a shoe.

Same soft, crinkly leather. Same studded brass hardware. A handsome if familiar ultra-flat sneaker that simultaneously acknowledges Balenciaga's past while reflecting its future.

As far as aughts-era bags are concerned, the Balenciaga City Bag is the grand supreme. Born in an era of velour tracksuits and blinged-out belts, the Balenciaga City bag went viral long before social media existed. Every It Girl of the era, from Beyoncé to the Olsen twins, carried the City Bag at some point or another. 

Fast forward 20-ish years, and Balenciaga’s City Bag, originally called the Motorcycle Bag, is back to its former glory and then some.

This is thanks in large part to culture's propensity for nostalgia, which helped revitalize the bag during the tenure of former Balenciaga creative director Demna leading to the "Le City Bag's" 2024 relaunch.

All the while, Balenciaga has similarly channeled a Y2K feel underfoot but through entirely new sneakers so chunky that it feels like a reinvention of the word. Shoes like the Triple S, 3XL, and the Defender became cultural benchmarks against which the beefy sneaker standard was set. 

But when the City Bag, Balenciaga's hero product, was reborn as a shoe, it yielded a fully flat sneaker. This is the present and future of Balenciaga in one sleek leather shape. 

The super-flat $825 City sneaker is a wearable manifestation of the modern Balenciaga, now overseen by Pierpaolo Piccioli (the City Sneaker may very well have been designed prior to Piccioli's tenure).

And it's saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it — rather than ripping up the luxury playbook, Balenciaga is observing it. Rather than going against the grain with shoes so big they demand their own zip code, Balenciaga is simply tuning in to the broader flat shoe discourse, something it’s admittedly already dabbled in but something that Balenciaga now is participating in, rather than leading.

It's been absurdly established, documented, and certified twice over that flat shoes are THE shoes. That's not really a matter up for debate nor has it been for the last five years. The thickened shoes synonymous with early-era Balenciaga are still around but ironically overshadowed by their miniscule brethren. So, too, is Balenciaga, which is still quietly responsible for defining much of how people dress today but has been much diminished since its heyday.

So, to see Balenciaga, the original jumbo-sneaker luxury house, turn its most recognizable statement piece into an ultra-thin sneaker feels quite of the time, not ahead of it.

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