Bottega Veneta’s Ballerina Trail Shoe Is Its Weirdest Sneaker Ever
Bottega Veneta’s Orbit sneaker was an instant hit. Two years ago, when it was first unveiled, the all-new silver ASICS-coded dad shoe was immediately adopted by stylish folk as disparate as Lil Yachty and Hailey Bieber. Then it began evolving.
The Orbit Flash took the shoe’s slender proportions to a new extreme, and it’s now mutated into a semi-collapsing ballerina trail shoe.
This trail version of the Orbit Flash is Bottega Veneta’s freakiest sneaker. Whereas most of the Italian luxury house’s footwear recreates classic shapes in Bottega’s finest leather, this Orbit Flash sneaker explores fresh territory.
Bottega’s latest flat-soled runner pulls from a myriad of references. Its hardy ripstop nylon underlays and no-tie toggle shoelaces are classic trail shoe features, while the paper-thin sole that spills onto the back recalls ‘70s running shoes like the Nike Moon Shoe. But then there’s the elasticated collar, reminiscent of ballet flats, which crumples the upper and forces that slender sole unit into a banana-shaped curve.
The resulting product is simultaneously a retro runner, a luxe post-trail shoe, and yet another ballerina-flavored sneaker.
Bottega’s new Orbit Flash sneakers, available now for $990, are a long way from the original Y2K Orbit dad shoe. But that's a sign of the times: We're currently deep into the era of dainty thin sneaker supremacy.
The shoe slots in nicely amongst its peers' new flat-footed footwear offerings, like Prada’s similarly elasticated runner and Dries Van Noten’s painfully sleek post-Samba sneaker, though alongside Bottega Veneta’s more traditional footwear offering of mainly leather dress shoes and old-school court sneakers, it sticks out as an experimental outlier.
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