2013 Balenciaga Arena

by Steve Dool

It would be hard to argue that the Triple S isn’t Balenciaga’s most impactful sneaker design, stomping its way into fashion history as an icon of the ugly footwear movement that characterized much of what the major design houses released during the tail end of the 2010s. It was loud and heavy, as impractical and polarizing as it was pricey and unavoidable. GQ called it “insane-looking”; restocks sold out routinely for months. But Balenciaga had been experimenting with unconventional sneakers for years by the time the Triple S and its many knockoffs were infiltrating the mainstream in 2018. At the start of the decade, the house was already quietly courting men with money to spend on luxury sneakers. Quietly, that is, until the label’s Arena sneaker truly took hold, in 2013, three years after the silhouette was introduced.

Suddenly, Balenciaga was a player in the lucrative men’s footwear market. And somewhat unexpectedly for a label that had not previously moved the needle very much in men’s fashion—let alone in sneakers—the Arena was at the center of a cultural shift that would influence for years thereafter how men dress to show off their assumed wealth.

It helps to understand the context of where we were in 2013 to piece together why, in hindsight, the Arena hit the way that it did. Compared to what came before and what would come after, optimism was relatively high. Barack Obama was in his second term, the pope was progressive, and Bitcoin was minting millionaires in ways most of us probably didn’t fully understand.

Unlike several years prior, when the economy was down and it was poor form to consume conspicuously, 2013 was a comfortably post-recession open season for big-ticket purchases. Instagram, launched in October 2010, had only recently created the Explore page feature, driving up the potential for anyone to build a follower count beyond their immediate social circle and motivating the extra thirsty to be even thirstier.

Pop culture was flooded with men who visibly placed a premium on the clothes they wore. And they spoke about it, too. These were peak Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, and House of Cards times, providing ample fodder for people entertained by impeccably suited men behaving badly. Beyond bespoke tailoring, though, there was also a noticeable move toward integrating high-end items and upscale finishes into even the most casual looks. 2013 was high-low season.

For celebrities, even if the price point wasn’t shifting, the aesthetic was. Fresh off a marathon world tour with Jay-Z in support of Watch the Throne, Kanye West was ditching the baroque, gold-leafed excess of his Riccardo Tisci–designed stage wardrobe for a Yeezus-era look that was still luxe, but militant and monochromatic, distressed and topped off with crystal Margiela masks. Justin Timberlake was singing about wearing a suit and tie (and remained faithful to his Air Jordans), and LeBron James had mastered wearing both custom tailoring and streamlined streetwear pieces that came with similar price tags.

Images of burgeoning style icons and their fits were posted on sites like Complex and UpscaleHype and shared across social media early and often, marking the beginning of a fashion arms race. He who has the most likes wins.

High-end men’s designers were also pulling from streetwear influence more explicitly than before, led by younger creative leads in high-profile roles, like Tisci at Givenchy and Kim Jones—who grew up loving Nike and basketball and listening to hip-hop—at Louis Vuitton.

“I think designers always looked to what was happening on the streets, and streetwear as a definition always existed—just its qualities and perceptions as a term have changed,” Julie Ragolia, a veteran editor, stylist, and menswear expert, explained. “And as brands became more savvy at marketing than ever by way of social media algorithms, they just began chasing what they perceived as ‘liked.’”

James Harris was a style editor at Complex in 2013 and remembers that year as a key turning point in the evolution of how men find inspiration to dress.

“2013 wasn’t the beginning of social media, but it was when social media and streetwear combined forces and blasted off,” Harris said. “It was the start of the ubiquity of instantly shared imagery and paparazzi photos. It was a perfect storm for a single statement sneaker that was instantly recognizable as a status piece to become the biggest sneaker of the year.” The genius of the Arena in 2013, whether intentional or not, was just that: it was easily identifiable as a specific item and as a signifier of luxury. In the world of sneakers, the Arena is minimalist—more Common Projects than, say, Off-White—free of overt logo branding or the bells and whistles other design houses frequently employ. The shoe sits on a thick rubber sole, most often done in the same color as the leather upper, although some versions included contrasting tones. The tongue is attached, padded, and folded under along the sides, giving it the appearance of being extra thick. There is some subtle toe cap stitching and some more on the heel counter. The high-top version also comes with a heel tab, which is the one true reference to function in a shoe largely driven by form. Maybe none of those features alone or combined would have actually been enough to make it instantly recognizable, especially not when taken in on the four-inch display of an iPhone 5. The key element that set the Arena apart from the crowd was the hardware: a textured lace plate and seven metal D-rings up each side of the high-top version (six on the lows), rather than a lacing system that makes use of eyelets. The D-rings gave the Arena an edge, toughening it up a bit and referencing inspiration taken from a hiking boot.

“Fashion had begun to embrace masculinity as stronger,” said Ragolia, citing a ruggedness that had crept its way onto the runways in major fashion cities. “The Arena sneaker was a brilliant hybridization of the mountain shoe and a street sneaker.”

Not that anybody would take the Arenas out on the trail. These were not performance sneakers in the slightest. They were, however, luxurious, done up in lambskin, suede, or wrinkled leather and lined in leather, too. They came in a wide range of tasteful colorways: white, black, red, navy, a deep green. James’s stylist posted a pair on Instagram that had been custom-made for the Heat MVP in black woven leather; James would later wear another pair in olive for a spread in GQ, too.

The roster of celebrity fans of the Arena ran much deeper than just James, though. Rick Ross got himself Arenas in white for Christmas in 2012—a flex, as it was mostly sold out online at the time. Wale, a noted sneakerhead, had reds in his rotation, and Usher had them in blue suede. Pusha-T was a fan, wearing them off camera and on the set of his “Trouble on My Mind” video, with his costar, Tyler, the Creator, donning a matching pair. Dwyane Wade slipped his on with a Lanvin tux and posed arm in arm with Gabrielle Union on the red carpet at the ESPY Awards.

In January 2013, Grammy-winning producer Hit-Boy told Complex he had eleven pairs of all-white Arenas. “I like how sleek they are,” he explained. “They just look like a men’s shoe. It’s a prime example of what a men’s shoe looks like.”

Hit-Boy confessed he first noticed Arenas on the man who was undoubtedly the sneaker’s most notable and most visible fan. “A couple years ago, when I saw Kanye rocking them, I was like, ‘What the fuck are those?’” he said in the same interview. “I had never seen them before.”

West had been a vocal, longtime lover of luxury fashion by the time fans and friends noticed him wearing Arenas, from his days as the self-styled “Louis Vuitton Don” to when he famously wore a Céline blouse during his Coachella performance in 2011. And while some may have been turned off by his constant reminders that he is a tastemaker—a tendency encapsulated perfectly in his 2013 New York Times interview in which he demanded people respect his “trendsetting abilities” before referring to himself as the Steve Jobs of “internet, downtown, fashion, culture”—the fact remains that, especially at the time, what he wore mattered.

West wore the Balenciaga Arenas—and he wore them all over. He put on a white pair for lunch with his then-girlfriend, now-wife, Kim Kardashian, at L’Avenue in Paris; a black pair while house hunting in Beverly Hills; some red ones at a hotel in Miami. He paired them with a Givenchy kilt at a Hurricane Sandy relief concert and with a field coat in New York City’s SoHo. By the time 2013 came around, if you were inspired to buy Arenas after seeing someone other than West wearing them, the odds are pretty good that person came to them via Kanye West.

“Celebrities have always been influential in furthering a brand or an individual piece,” said Harris. “But at this time, right around Yeezus, Kanye said rappers are the new rock stars. More than ever, that was right when rappers started becoming accepted beyond their core fanbase as stylish guys.”

West wasn’t the only rapper with a flair for designer goods influencing men’s style at the time. On his major-label debut, Long.Live.ASAP, released in January of that year, ASAP Rocky was rapping about outfits from Vogue and Goyard bags, making a name for himself as a new style god. But West—in the midst of a clean, forward-looking style evolution that was taking him miles away from his previous shutter shades and ducktail hair—was embracing fashion as a lifestyle and a worthy artistic pursuit, speaking of his favorite designers in lofty tones that gave fashion credibility as something worth researching and investigating in the eyes of his fans.

In effect, he was positioning himself as an arbiter of elevated good taste, a worthwhile angle for him to pursue as he set his sights on building his own fashion empire. Other rappers and celebrities might splurge on Louis Vuitton luggage in a monogram print to telegraph their wealth as so many have done before, but West, the fashion expert, was going logoless, right down to his minimalist, hiking-inspired sneakers.

The result was a more grown-up way to show off that looked fresh and, even more significantly, looked expensive. (A pair of Arenas would set you back $545 or more at the time.) Writing about the sneakers in a piece published on Complex.com that June titled “What Your Favorite Sneakers Say About You,” writer and sneaker historian Russ Bengtson characterized an Arena wearer in much the same way as you would the best-dressed people of the year: “I have simple taste and an extravagant budget.”

Or at least the illusion of disposable income. Part of the widespread adoption of the Kanye look of the time was that, without logos, it could more or less be re-created on a budget. Replace a Balmain hoodie with one from American Apparel, A.P.C. denim with a pair of Levi’s, and you might have enough left over to pick up the real-deal footwear, the easiest part of your wardrobe for others to authenticate on sight. Get the Arenas, and you might be able to fudge the rest.

Whether or not fashion industry gatekeepers bought into West as a visionary, his fans and admirers did. And West, for what it’s worth, noticed. “Listen to what I’m saying, me, as Kanye West,” he told GQ. “I guarantee you, I’m more than 50 percent responsible for every men’s shoe that they sell. Me, the singular person. More than 50 percent responsible for every Balenciaga shoe they sell.”

Such a precise number would be impossible to prove definitively, but more impressive than sales figures might be that West exerted enough pull to get more than a handful of men to even consider a shoe—or anything at all—from Balenciaga in 2013.

“There definitely were guys who knew about Balenciaga, but generally speaking, no,” Harris remembered. “At the time it was more about Saint Laurent, Rick Owens, Raf Simons, Givenchy through Watch the Throne. Riccardo Tisci. Even Marcelo Burlon.”

The foundation of what would become Balenciaga began with a boutique opened by couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga in San Sebastián, Spain, in 1917; he would go on to relocate to Paris at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Balenciaga the man was a creative visionary when it came to his designs for women’s dresses and coats, favoring dramatic silhouettes in heavy fabrics, often with signature padding around the hips or exaggerated waistlines. He was a designer’s designer, inspiring Christian Dior and Hubert de Givenchy and employing legendary names like Oscar de la Renta before they ventured out on their own. His work is hallowed among fashion lovers—but his legacy is firmly on the women’s side of the industry.

So much so, in fact, that Balenciaga the label didn’t even debut a ready-to-wear menswear collection until 2004, a solid eighty-seven years after its namesake established his business and a good thirty-two years after he died. When Balenciaga unveiled men’s clothing for the first time, the house was led by designer Nicolas Ghesquière (who, after his fifteen-year stint there ended in 2012, would later go on to head up womenswear at Louis Vuitton). Like Balenciaga, Ghesquière was praised as a wunderkind for his women’s designs, which were lauded for being innovative and modern, but still reverent toward the label’s history. The men’s collections, in contrast, were a mixed bag.

“Balenciaga menswear felt a bit more like an afterthought,” said Ragolia. “Looks were more commercial, and there was a severity to that styling that didn’t necessarily ring of viewpoint or story.”

The lookbook for the Spring 2008 collection, for example, featured models wearing fairly straightforward suits, save for the fact that some had their pants tucked into gladiator sandals, or were not wearing pants at all—just a jacket and tie, silk boxers, and combat boots. Whereas women with the means were buying Balenciaga, the brand couldn’t seem to connect to what a male consumer wanted, and over-the-top styling quirks weren’t helping as menswear was winding down into minimalist sophistication.

The Arena, however, began to solve some of those problems. The silhouette, with its padded tongue, was striking in the way that Balenciaga’s classic baby doll dresses were: exaggerated and memorable. But guys didn’t need to know the brand history in order to understand the sneaker’s appeal—it was still a simple enough design that you could wear it with your En Noir leather joggers or integrate it into your streetwear-heavy wardrobe for the high-low look that was gaining momentum.

“Back then, as a younger and more streetwear-oriented audience was starting to become aware of high-fashion houses, a single item could become an entry point into the wider micro-universe of a designer brand,” said Harris. “Kanye and Rocky were educating their fanbase that wasn’t as in tune with fashion houses. People were gravitating toward entry-point items. Sneakers were for dudes what handbags were for women.”

It helped that men across the board were dressing more informally, not just those driving the front end of trends. Strict dress codes at work were becoming antiquated, athleisure was on the rise, and there were fewer places where you couldn’t feasibly wear sneakers. “Sneakers started to become an acceptable accessory to tailoring,” Ragolia said. “Men stopped wearing shoes.”

But if men who wore suits regularly were better primed to replace their oxfords and derbies with luxury sneakers as work attire relaxed, the real revolution represented by the Arenas came courtesy of the young people who weren’t necessarily clocking in at a white-collar job every day, but were now buying designer sneakers. In the 2013 edition of Complex’s annual roundup of sneakers of the year, editor Joe La Puma noted the sneaker’s undeniable impact. “Hate ’em or love ’em, this was the aspirational sneaker for sneakerheads this year,” he wrote. “They really were a silo that kind of changed how true sneakerheads look at lux. It was the Arena, and then the Saint Laurent highs and lows later in the year, that had the biggest impact. But the Arena was the silo that set everything off.”

Luxury labels had made sneakers before this one, but the proof of concept provided by the Arena was pivotal. Rick Owens x Adidas, a lasting entry in the fashion sneaker landscape, was announced in June 2013, the same month as the founding of Buscemi, the brand that has taken luxury sneaker price tags to six-figure heights. In the time since, we’ve seen Gucci and Alexander McQueen riff on low-profile Stan Smith–a–likes; Ferragamo release a running shoe; and Dior mix calfskin with a technical knit. The list could go on.

And, of course, the Arena is a clear predecessor to the rest of Balenciaga’s late-2010s stable of successful sneaker silhouettes sent out into the world, for better or for worse, with buzz, press coverage, and sales in equal measure. Balenciaga creative director Demna Gvasalia, appointed to the role in 2015, has shepherded in smash sneaker hits like the sock-with-a-sole Speed Trainers, memorably name-checked by Cardi B in “I Like It,” and the monster Triple S styles in all of their many iterations. His previous success as creative lead at Vetements, the irreverent design collective he cofounded with his brother Guram, had proven a demand for luxury fashion that is more overtly influenced by streetwear than it is haute couture. As he did with Vetements, which enjoyed a healthy men’s business under his tenure there, Gvasalia continued to push Balenciaga’s men’s offering to the forefront, putting on the house’s first men’s runway show in 2016.

In the show, models wore Triple S sneakers with down jackets, slim-cut khakis, boxy suits, and velour track pants. The streetwear influences of the Arena era were still front and center in the brand identity, as was the casualization of tailoring and the mixing of high and low—in aesthetics, at least, as even those velour track pants came with a price that crept toward a grand. And the sneakers tied it all together, as the Arena first did for Balenciaga in 2013.

“When you think about it, and if you go back and read the blogs, it definitely played a huge role in bridging the worlds of streetwear and high fashion,” Harris said. “There may have been a sneaker in the moment that created a bigger buzz, but it didn’t have the lasting legacy that the Arena had.”

Honorable Mention
Nike Flyknit Lunar 1+

by Drew Hammell

“Would you like your Flyknits steamed?” That wasn’t an uncommon question to be asked when the Nike Flyknit Lunar 1+ released in stores early in 2013. As though the shoes were shrink-to-fit denim, select Nike shops offered customers the opportunity to steam their new Flyknits to get a more tailored fit. After a customer purchased a pair, they were able to place them in a “sneaker sauna” for thirty seconds to heat and dampen the Flyknit fibers. Then the customer was directed to put them on while they were still warm and damp so that the Flyknit fibers conformed to their feet. The result was one of the lightest, most form-fitting running sneakers Nike has ever released.

After the brightly colored Racer- and Trainer-inspired frenzies in 2012, everyone wanted to get their hands on anything Flyknit. Thanks in part to the success of the Volt trainers that were on the feet of every Team USA athlete who stood on the medal podium at the Summer Olympics in London, word spread about this new shoe that featured an upper without precedent.

It was only a matter of time before Flyknit uppers would become the standard for running, basketball, and training sneakers because of the technology’s many advantages.

The Lunar 1+ was the next step in the Flyknit sneaker evolution. Designed by Rob Williams, the Flyknit Lunar 1+ featured a new upper design, along with an updated Lunarlon foam midsole. The Lunarlon sole was inspired by astronauts bouncing on the moon and offered the sneaker a pillowy feel. The brilliance of the Flyknit upper was that it was completely synthetic, which gave the shoe a lighter weight and plenty of breathability without much compromise on durability. Embedded inside the seamless upper were flexible Flywire cables for added support. The ultra-light sock-like shoe weighed just under 8 ounces, yet was sturdy and stable enough to run a 10K in. The limited materials used in the model were synthetic, since the shoe was designed with sustainability in mind.

The Flyknit Lunar 1 released in many bright colors and also got a Supreme collab in a black/dark grey colorway. The world-renowned streetwear brand rode the wave of the Flyknit movement by stamping “SUP” boldly on the side of the new model in the fall of 2013.

The Flyknit Lunar 1+ was the second iteration of what has become a complete transformation for sneaker uppers. Its sustainability, style, and remarkable light weight set the standard for what a twenty-first-century sneaker could be.