As seen on Unboxed Issue 54. The Unboxed newsletter covers the most important stories of the week across sneakers, sports, and fashion straight to your inbox on Mondays.
California-based footwear brand Collegium has been steadily winning the attention of sneakerheads since 2015. They first got on my radar because of a Chelsea boot they made, but it’s clear that sneakers are the soul of the brand. While many of their silhouettes have been reworked classics, they’ve always stood out because it felt like real sneakerheads were behind the designs. This isn’t the case for every mall brand or startup that wants to jump into sneakers with the same “affordable luxury” alternatives and talking points. That works for some, but we only need so many spinoffs of the Common Projects Achilles. Yes, I know that Collegium tried that, but again, it’s always felt like this is the rare upstart sneaker brand that actually “gets it.”
Their most popular sneaker has to be the Air Jordan 1 inspired “Destroyer,” which even came in Bred and Royal colorways and is reminiscent of the Saint Laurent AJ1 spinoff that was popular in years past. Not a shoe for me, but the sneaker community’s adoption of it isn’t surprising when you look at OG AJ1 colorway aftermarket prices. That, combined with an era less offended by bootleg and a sneakerhead’s approach to storytelling and styling, puts Collegium in a prime position to own this niche of sneaker culture. But it’s their new silhouette, the “Devastator,” that really caught my attention. I get Air Jordan 2 vibes, but most comparisons seem to point to Virgil Abloh’s Louis Vuitton Trainer. Given that the LV trainer has its own inspiration tied back to Avia, maybe that makes Collegium’s take on it less offensive to a purist like myself. Or perhaps it’s the Italian quality, price points, men’s and women’s sizing, and subtle Air Jordan nods. There’s no question they could keep eating off sought-after AJ1 colorways, and maybe they will, but delivering on a new, less familiar silhouette is a step forward to me.
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