These Waterproof New Balances Are a Piece of Japanese Streetwear History
At first blush, these all-black GORE-TEX New Balance 580 sneakers look quite ordinary, which makes it all the wilder when you peep the insole and realize that there are four companies behind these bad boys, if you include New Balance itself. So, what's the deal behind the Mita Sneakers x MASTERPIECE SOUND × Hombre Niño x New Balance GORE-TEX 580?
Well, there's a lot of Japanese streetwear history to unpack here.
Long story short, New Balance's 580 sneaker was an instant hit in Japan in the years following its 1996 release. It quickly became a hot commodity in the streets of Tokyo's suburbs, even though it was quite difficult to come by. The sneaker market then was nowhere near as international as it is now, y'see.
At the time, Yoshifumi "YOPPI" Egawa was running influential boutique and clothing brand HECTIC, AKA REAL MAD HECTIC. He'd already befriended movers and shakers like Hiroshi Fujiwara and KAWS but it was Mita Sneakers director Hideyuki Kunii who set in motion one of Egawa's most important collaborations: the HECTIC x Mita Sneakers x New Balance MT580.
They churned out a variety of collaborative 580 shoes for years to come, constantly thrilling Japanese sneakerheads.
Remember that Japan's sneaker market is far-removed from its Western counterpart: sure, there's a lot of love for classics like the Air Jordan 1 but Japan also admires oddities like the Nike Air Moc and Reebok Pump Fury. The New Balance 580 is another one of those ultra-specific shoes that captured Japan's heart.
Japanese sneakerheads couldn't get enough of HECTIC and Mita's New Balance 580s partially because, again, it was wildly difficult to come by even the normal 580s.
"Without that collaboration, I would never be where I am today," Kunii said in a recent interview with domestic sneakerhead bible SHOES MASTER.
There's no particular timing behind the pair's reunion, but it's a big deal to the kind of OG streetwear dudes who also get amped about Supreme's Bounty Hunter collab.
Releasing October 7 at Mita Sneakers, the Mita Sneakers x MASTERPIECE SOUND × Hombre Niño New Balance GORE-TEX 580 brings in everyone involved with the OG team-ups. Egawa now heads Hombre Niño while his HECTIC co-founder Naotake Magara oversees MASTERPIECE SOUND.
The resulting team-up is a revisitation of everything that made the original 580 so classic, with some nice touches throughout.
But even if the shoe's colorway was just okay and it didn't have a Vibram sole and there was no GORE-TEX lining, it'd still be special to the dudes who're gonna line up for it either way. This one is for the heads.
