There’s a Greek proverb that says, “Do good, throw it in the water." In other words, do good deeds but don’t demand acknowledgement. Vancouver retailer Haven specializes in small things that make your life better without ever asking for reciprocation. It's so devoted to perfecting the details of its in-house clothing line, for instance, that most wearers may never, or at least never need to, notice them.

This the mentality defines Haven’s GORE-TEX HOKA Stinson sneaker, a shoe that’d have zero issue being thrown into the water. Quotidian was the M.O. for Haven’s first collaborative HOKA shoe, so quotidian that the sneaker will be deemed a success if the people who lace it up forget that it exists.

“A lot of the way we think about product development is like, you shouldn’t have to think about any of these things,” says Arthur Chmielewski, Haven cofounder and creative director. “We never design shoes that are the focus of what you’re wearing. We want the shoes to be elegant, wearable in any type of setting.”

“You know it works because it doesn’t come to mind,” adds Thomas Cykana, HOKA’s senior director of global collaborations & partnerships. “It’s like, we did all the thinking for you.”

And think they did. The process that Haven and HOKA undertook to create this Stinson sneaker was incredibly intensive, demanding that the shoe's upper be taken apart and reassembled from the inside out around its centerpiece feature, a waterproof GORE-TEX membrane.

“We approach collaborations like, ‘That’s really cool.’ ‘That speaks to us,’” says Chmielewski “We’re also thinking how we could make the best version of the shoe, whether that’s a material upgrade or comfort improvement.” Small tweaks have big reverberations. In this case, the Stinson’s materials and colors were reconsidered to both mirror the tones of Haven’s Fall/Winter 2025 and achieve the desired stealth styling. But GORE-TEX was the crux of it all, a longtime Haven signature that’s borderline essential for life in drizzly Vancouver.

“We were like, ‘Have you guys ever done a GORE-TEX version of this?’” Chmielewski says. No, HOKA had not. And not for nothing: “The tooling had to be redone from the ground up. Just to add a membrane to the shoe, the fit changes completely,” he says. 

“These guys are visionaries. Their ability to make these edits with such attention to detail is unmatched in the industry,” Cykana says, citing Buckminster Fuller’s Ephemeralization principle, wherein greater tech allows one to do more with less. In this case, the prevalence of cutting-edge materials allowed Haven to create the ultimate anonymous sneaker, a shoe so considered and so useful that it ceases to be an intentional object. It instead becomes an extension of the human form.

“For the most part, the shape stayed the same,” Chmielewski says. But “we tried to make it feel more craft-oriented and timeless” by outfitting this newly recut upper with plush suede and a thoughtful hex-patterned ripstop that mirrors Haven’s own hex branding.

These are the little touches that make Haven’s work read as Haven: that hex pattern matches the debossed Haven hex logo on the heel — itself a minute element that took much back and forth to perfect — which matches the subtle hex-shaped eyelet towards the sneaker’s tongue. 

None of these factors demand attention but they add up to a final, intelligent product. In this way, Haven’s Stinson underscores Haven’s quest for quality in even the smallest of components, the restless pursuit of something not just good but better. HOKA’s thick-soled Stinson, beast that it was, was good. But Haven’s Stinson is an improvement born of need, not want. It has a reason for being.

“I go back to that analogy of a Range Rover or Defender,” says Chmielewski. “Like, most of the time, you’re driving them through the city but then you can go through these crazy environments and do anything in them. [Likewise,] having GORE-TEX shoes just gives you reassurance. You feel protected in them”

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