In recent years, footwear has gotten freaky. Though certain swathes of the fashion world have always had a thing for feet, the fetish has fully extended to the mainstream, with brands falling over themselves to achieve a coveted viral foot moment. The last few seasons have seen McQueen models hit the runway in tasselled, cloven hoof boots, Marc Jacobs make cartoonish, blown-up sandals fit for Minnie Mouse, Balenciaga lean into the FiveFinger hype with a Vibram collab, and a general hyper-focus on feet happening across all corners of the industry. Whether it be double-stacked Jacquemus kitten heels or Crocs that are actually cowboy boots, we seem to have collectively reached Peak Foot – so what to move on to next when all the weird and whacky signifiers have been used up? Snapping on some loud, reflective, attention-seeking trainers, obviously!
Of course, metallic silver trainers are hardly a new phenomenon, but cast your mind back to June 2023, and something shifted. Wales Bonner and adidas captured the culture with a silver re-edition of their already-über-popular long tongue Samba, bringing the reflective shoe to the masses. Once relegated to the questionable tastes of gaudy fanatics with a penchant for Philipp Plein, the silver shoe was reinvented as a bona-fide fashion must-have, its signals shifted from ever-so-slightly-campy to undeniably cool. Now, the silver sneaker was speaking to the fashion-conscious person in a way that the simple, non-reflective clog could never. A silver shoe became a sign to those around you, a low-effort/high-payoff one that showed a bit of personality, a (very loud) gesture of someone in the know. Fashion people are noted for their conspicuous hoarding of coveted items, so this Magpie-coded obsession with shiny shoes made perfect sense.
Over a year on from that Wales Bonner moment, and silver sneakers have now reached full trend status, with every brand guaranteeing an easy win by lacquering their styles in the silver stuff – and who can blame them, really? Sporting giant adidas seem to be leading the pack with a new silver Wales Bonner style, plus metallic editions in a number of other silhouettes – but other brands are hot on its heels. Untitlab, the footwear and accessories brand founded in 2019, has a number of gorp-y styles that wouldn’t look out of place on a hiking trail, Italian designer Luca Magliano has his own sneaker-dress shoe hybrid version, and even Rihanna’s gotten in on the trend with her Fenty x Puma collab. To see all of those styles and more, scroll down for all the best silver sneakers on the market right now.
BOTTEGA VENETA
Orbit Sneaker