New-School Sneakers, Old-School Scottish Farmer Swag
Nike did ‘em. adidas did ‘em. New Balance and PUMA, too. And Vans has done a whole range of ‘em by now. What am I on about? Tweed sneakers.
Trading their bestsellers’ cotton or leather shells for this woolly, woven heritage textile, contemporary shoe brands are currently obsessed with having their products look like Chanel suits for the feet.
From fuzzy Nike Dunks made with rustic hand-woven tweed to Vans Old Skool skate shoes in a detailed cacophony of colored threads and even extra elderly Clarks shoes, the extended sneakerverse is rich with examples of casual everyday footwear conjoined with the age-old material that is tweed.
And often the protected Harris Tweed, specifically, handmade in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland with virgin wool for nearly 200 years, is appearing on these shoes.
Known for being durable, weather-resistant, and richly textured, traditional tweed is closely associated with the regional culture of hunting. But it’s also made many referential high fashion appearances in collections of British designers like Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen over the years.
The aforementioned Chanel is probably the most prominent user of tweed, though, world-renowned over decades for its gold-buttoned women's two pieces. The French house is on the brink of ringing in its new era, under ex-Bottega Veneta wunderkind Matthieu Blazy. Is the anticipation for a new Chanel (and possibly, finally Chanel menswear) fanning the flames of tweed sneakers’ recent momentum?
Maybe. But to be fair, certain streetwear-tweed crossovers date back as far as the early 2000s, so let's not overemphasize it.
Having clearly overcome its dated, even stuffy connotations, tweed's latest surge is easier to blame on its luxuriousness. It's a small but effective, double-edged intervention into what are otherwise quotidian footwear silhouettes, on which an old-school fabric suddenly reads as avant-garde.
It's a sophisticated flip of the bird at average-joe-sneakerdom. In the same way a monocle and a tweed blazer signal sophistication, your tweed sneakers do indeed make you a wee bit better than thy peer.
I don't make the rules.
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