Blue Bottle Coffee is one of the better chain coffee joints, consistently offering both handsomely minimalist restaurants and tasty drinks across some of America's bigger cities. So it's odd that a well-connected café intrinsically linked to good taste (both literal and thematic) would partner with New Balance on a sneaker that's so... plain.
On August 1, Blue Bottle and New Balance dropped a collaborative Fresh Foam X 1080 v12 shoe that's essentially just a normal-looking white shoe with some blue accents. The Blue Bottle logo is embroidered on the heel and the brown outsole possibly represents coffee beans?
It's a shame, because Blue Bottle has the eye and New Balance has the design acumen to create a more flavorful sneaker. Two titans of taste! Two great tastes that should taste great together!
What if they tapped into Blue Bottle's airy, modernist interior design? Or created a brown suede number to better evoke coffee.
Now, why would Blue Bottle Coffee get involved with New Balance and why they would issue a collaborative Fresh Foam shoe, of all things?
I assume it's the Japanese connection.
Now, Blue Bottle's New Balance collab is widely available outside of Japan but Blue Bottle is perhaps better-loved in Japan than it is in America.
Influential architectural firms were tapped Karimoku to design domestic Blue Bottle stores, for instance.
Human Made founder NIGO is such a big fan that he's collaborated with Blue Bottle himself and even set one up inside one of his flagship stores, while Japanese label sacai partnered with Blue Bottle in late July on an overseas pop-up coffee and T-shirt experience.
Like Blue Bottle, New Balance's Fresh Foam line is obsessively beloved in Japan, where it's been the source of consistent collaborations over the years from stalwart labels like N.HOOLYWOOD.
Add in the fact that Japanese imprints love securing their own New Balance collab — even for the weirder models — and you've got a better explanation for Blue Bottle's New Balance. Maybe.
The one remaining question is why the colorway is so plain but, if I had to hazard a guess, it'd be to better reflect the spacious Blue Bottle stores. The end result looks more like something that'd be part of a barista's uniform than the delicious collab it ought to be but, hey, perhaps this is merely the first Blue Bottle Balances to come.
