New Balance has blessed the sneaker world with some wonderfully weird innovations as of late but New Balance perfume takes the cake. That's right, New Balance makes fragrances now and, y'know what? They're actually pretty brilliant.
You ought to be able to guess what the New Balance "Distilled" fragrance series smells like without even taking a whiff of the new scents, even if the fragrance names — Original and Court — don't actually give much away.
If you assumed that New Balance's first-ever fragrances would smell like sneakers, congratulations! You're familiar with the footwear biz. And you probably love the smell of unworn shoes as much as New Balance itself (or, heck, anyone with a schnozz).
To be fair, New Balance isn't just repackaging the admittedly delicious scent that wafts from a pair of unworn sneakers as an eau de toilette you can spritz on your wrist. Sure, New Balance Distilled fragrances can be worn by people, but they're also intended to dress up your sneakers' scent profile, a cologne that can dress up even your worn-down beaters.
There's more depth to New Balance Distilled to that, though. Original does indeed smell like leather, rubber, and suede, but Australian scent imprint Perfume Playground, with whom New Balance partnered to create the two fragrances, also infused notes of "cotton socks" and "freshly mowed grass," which means that your dad shoes can now smell like dad's shoes.
Court, meanwhile, is a little more active, turning Australian sandalwood, patchouli, and juniper berry wild tyrol essential oil into a fragrance dusted by hints of basketball rubber and hardwood floor.
“New Balance’s Distilled fragrances are uniquely versatile: they can be sprayed on shoes to keep them fresh, but also smell beautiful when worn on the skin,” Perfume Playground founder Samantha Copland told an Australian publication.
Copland explained that the "balanced" scents intentionally share notes of leather to keep a certain level of continuity between the two Distilled fragrances. It's a clever touch that makes these feel less like obvious stabs at scent from a newcomer cashing in on quirk.
Sneaker brands have dabbled in perfumery before, mind you.
Nike and adidas, for instance, have created their own various eau de toilette products that now litter secondhand sites (and would probably be best used for scenting shoes rather than skin given their vintage).
The New Balance scents are destined to be a far more niche. They were only available exclusively for the first 100 purchases made at the debut New Balance Grey Store in Australia, opening at Sydney's The Galeries shopping center on December 19.
There are no further plans to produce New Balance fragrances, unfortunately.
That's a pretty big get for Australia, really, since there's no other Grey Store below the equator and hardly any anywhere else. New Balance only operates fewer than two dozen and most are situated in Asia. It's a shame that they're so uncommon because these host some of New Balance's best product and rarest shoes.
New Balance has been on, to put it lightly, a bit of a tear as of late. Between the wilder bits — zippered patchwork shoes, cow-printed 610s, winterized and transformable boots — there's plenty of typically excellent new colorways floating around, ranging from impressively classy 550 shoes to tasteful new looks for the red-hot 580 sneaker.
If ever the world deserved a New Balance fragrance, it's right now. If only the Boston-based sportswear company would continue to dive deeper into the mostly sneaker-distant realm of smelly stuff.
