‘We don’t want to dress like our parents’: If young people no longer wear trainers, what do they wear? The decline of the sneaker as the shoe par excellence represents an earthquake in the business model of giant urban fashion brands. But it’s also an opportunity to reclaim and modernize other footwear models, such as moccasins What started as a rumor grew into a commotion and — as happens with things that are often repeated — ended up being accepted as a universal truth. For a few years now, in conversations about urban fashion, there’s been a discussion about whether it’s possible to say — without hesitation — that sneaker culture is dead .
This trend long put the sports shoe at the center of everything, turning it into a desirable object of status and a commodity ripe for speculation in a resale market that has grown to become a global monster. Earlier this year, Shawn Stussy — one of the icons of urban fashion and creator of the Stüssy brand — was very direct in declaring the death of sneakers. His theory was simple: if someone like Donald Trump could sell limited edition sneakers, the culture that Stussy helped create already represented the opposite of its origins.
The question that arose then, in urban fashion circles, was clear: what now? To understand the supposed demise of sneaker culture, we have to go back a little, to the period between 2012 and 2022. During this decade, the sneaker became much more than just an icon for some urban subcu.