Even if visibility was the only metric worth measuring, 2023 was a banner year for HOKA.
The brand formerly known as HOKA ONE ONE was typically dominant in its comfort zone — making running shoes for actual runners — but the year proved remarkably favorable for the sportswear company. 2023 was the best yet demonstration of how HOKA can cross over beyond its bread and butter, a weighty impact befitting its beefy sneakers.
HOKA has been around since 2009, to be clear, and its had skin in the fashion game for maybe half as long, but 2023 was more than a victory lap. This year cemented HOKA's genius in more ways than just the tangible.
Don't get me wrong, though, the shoes it released and revamped this year were quite excellent, it's just that, as a whole, 2023 was peak HOKA.
This was, after all, the year that trail sneakers stepped away from being a niche-ish trend and began properly informing the greater footwear discourse, which set the stage for HOKA's hushed dominance.
New Balance got in on the action early with the reintroduction of its 610 silhouette, for instance, and, even in a year overrun by the adidas Samba, there was just as much fixation on Salomon's XT-6 shoe — seriously, everyone and their Lower East Side-dwelling grandma got a pair, furthering a trend that began in earnest a year or two ago.
But HOKA's innate tenets set itself and its shoes apart from the pack, as it noiselessly demonstrated throughout the year to only those who were looking at the big picture. I mean, is it not crazy that unassuming in-line HOKA sneakers generated as much excitement as much-anticipated Jordan drops?
The long-simmering hunger for trail shoes opened up a wider interest in anti-trend footwear, kicks borne of usefulness, serviceable shoes that're incidentally stylish.
Thus the broader adoption of shoes from imprints like HOKA, Salomon, Merrell, and young upstart Norda that happened in the fashion space this year reflects an appreciation for the adoption of unconventional style signifiers. It manifested in the availability of these shoes at retailers as mass as KITH, in stylish tastemakers cosigning each brand.
But while labels like Salomon grew in 2023 due to demand for specific styles, HOKA drew in fans with unfailing reliability. HOKA really didn't do all that much different this year than any other year, besides introducing some great new styles, it's more just that sneaker customers in 2023 are better attuned to the HOKA wavelength and therefore the climate is just right for HOKA domination.
HOKA's footwear uniformly delivers extreme cushioning, surprisingly lightness, and the brand's signature "maximalist" design ethos: busy upper over huge sole.
This is why I believe that no other company makes better-looking all-black running shoes than HOKA, because no one else is consistently devising shoes that say so much with their shape alone.
Other shoes rendered in dark shades risk looking like the anti-slip shoes assigned to waiters — with over a decade of wait-staff experience, I can attest to this — but HOKAs stand tall, literally, because they have such a distinct footprint. Literally.
The product is so good that it alone brings people in on its own strength alone. That's why you see post-workout loungers, gym-agnostic steppers, and cardio cravers all strolling in general release HOKA shoes even more often than you see tastemakers and influencers flexing the rare models.
All of HOKAs sneakers are just downright wearable, even moreso now that broader tastes are shifting to include pleasantly elderly-looking running shoes.
Hey, it's working for New Balance, why not HOKA? When comfort comes first, so too does demand for the original squishy walking sneaker.
HOKA's oeuvre is primarily informed by useful sneakers shaped by function over fashion. It knows that its stuff is stylish, to be clear, but HOKA's raison d'être is always gonna be purpose over posing.
Which, in turn, makes its shoes that much more appealing to people who know where to look. It's the same product-first mentality that attracts people to heritage workwear labels like Dickies and Carhartt, HOKA just so happens to make running shoes.
And, as more folks gravitate to HOKA's thick-soled sneakers, the more these kinds of kicks are normalized as stylish, to the point that luxury houses have begun aping HOKA's style.
Separately this is all not new information but the culmination of years of ardent consistency. 2023 is not where it all began but where it all peaked.
The HOKA Tor Ultra, for instance, was introduced back in 2018 but it had a particularly excellent 2023, actually, with restocks and buzzed-about collaborations that uniformly sold out but quick. I'd argue that this was the Tor Ultra line's strongest year yet, actually, as it was the first with proper in-line releases.
Really, the Tor Ultra makes for an excellent introduction to contemporary HOKA hype.
It was one of the company's first sneakers to achieve crossover success — back in 2018, when Engineered Garments' collaborative Tor Ultra sold out almost immediately, HOKA was only scarcely available at fashion boutiques and sneaker stores — and the reliable popularity of its latest iterations is obvious proof of the shoe's appeal.
I mean, I shouldn't have to spell out why the Vibram-soled, slightly streamlined (but still appealingly hefty) Tor Ultra first made HOKA digestible to a wider crowd; just look at it, it's a great shoe. I find the low-top iteration a little more approachable than the taller boot version but I get the desire for each.
And HOKA knows it, as it's already planned plentiful new variants of the Tor to drop in 2024.
But the Tor line isn't the sole HOKA offering of note in 2023. If it was, we wouldn't be here, would we?
HOKA spent the year patiently doling out some great new shoes indicative of its current winning streak, like the Skyline Float-X, Clifton 9 lined in GORE-TEX, Restore TC slip-on, and its latest masterpiece, the insulated Ora Primo mule.
All of these shoes make a solid case for growing acclimation for HOKA's design philosophy — sneaker shoppers can find these shoes both at running stores and exclusive sneaker boutiques — and they also demonstrate the brand's surprisingly heightened demand.
For example, the Restore slip-on and Ora Primo slipper proved so popular that they sold out instantly upon release — at time of writing (two weeks since its release) the latter remains out of stock on HOKA's website and various global stockists, regardless of colorway.
I once heard from a HOKA insider that the company was so unprepared for the rave reaction spurred by the Tor Ultra that it only adjusted production cycles to meet demand within the past year or so.
I suspect that humble HOKA is similarly struck by the immense wave of demand driven by its latest efforts. In the same way that you typically don't create content with the sole purpose of going viral, HOKA presumably isn't aiming to tap into the scarcity principle — and yet it did anyways.
HOKA keeps doing it. The sublime Mafate Three2 sneaker, for instance, is a Tor Ultra Low by any other name, what with its meaty Vibram sole and technical upper. And, just like the Tor line, the Mafate Three2 proves remarkably difficult to find in a full-size run even months after release.
These new models, dropped sparsely through the year, underscore a sense of deliberation. Whereas most footwear labels toss out new colorways and collaborations with gusto, HOKA makes markedly specific moves.
None of them feel outside of HOKA's typical purview, like some wacky new shape made for the sake of wackiness. Each sneaker instead feels like an extension of the core HOKA ideology — cushioned recovery footwear, reliable comfort on the trail.
It smacks of resolute consistency, the same no-nonsense purpose that's driven HOKA since even before it was adopted by shoppers used to digital queues and sold-out sneaker drops, just that they're now coming around to the HOKA spirit.
Similarly, HOKA only dropped a couple high-profile collaborations in 2023, for instance, with disparate friends like Brain Dead, Nicole McLaughlin and the running enthusiasts at Satisfy.
This is a solid group of pals for any sneaker company but the thing is, HOKA only brought in these folks to help introduce new HOKA models.
McLaughlin retooled HOKA's Mafate Three2 before it even dropped, Brain Dead ushered in an updated Hopara sandal, and the understated excellence of Satisfy's two colorways helped give the first lifestyle-leaning Clifton model a splashy entrance.
In the same way that HOKA's design cues always feel intentional, its new shoes and third-party link-ups smack of purpose. The only thing that's accidental is how big HOKA's drops have become.
There's a ripple effect felt in some of the new shoes hitting the market today, even those sold by companies that don't necessarily trade in HOKA's spaces.
But it's tangible in the chunky, grippy outsoles, the unapologetically technical uppers, the practicality imbued into all of these new shoes, traits informed by the success that only HOKA has had in making serviceable stuff look stylish.
This is hardly an unblazed trail — HOKA's been toiling away at this niche for over a decade now — but it all solidified in 2023.
HOKA's quiet takeover felt organic. In the most unassuming, unpremeditated manner, HOKA's timbre slowly overtook the footwear industry's individual interests until it became too omnipresent to ignore, not unlike HOKA's shoes themselves.
