The Sneaker of the Year 2025

0:07Hello and welcome to The Debrief from the Business of Fashion, where each week we delve into our most popular BOF professional stories with the correspondents who created them. I'm senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young. And I'm executive editor Brian Baskin. It is an annual tradition each December for sneakerheads to choose their sneaker of the year and defended to the death in Instagram comments and TikTok videos. We're recording this on December 16th, and usually by this point, a consensus pick has emerged. Think of Virgil Abloh's Jordan 1s in 2017 or Ama Meniere's Jordan 3s in 2021. Not this year, though.

0:45In 2025, everyone has their own idea of what should be sneaker of the year, with some surprise contenders like Vans and Converse going toe-to-toe with Nike and Adidas. Two of our correspondents, Mike Sykes and Leigh Takanashi, set out to answer the question of why choosing a sneaker of the year has proven so hard in 2025. They pulled data from And StockX and social media talked to nearly two dozen experts and polled nearly 200 BOF readers to find the answer. Mike, welcome to The Debrief. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. Let's start with the big picture. Why did you set out to do this this year?

1:21What felt so different about the sneaker conversation in 2025 compared to 2023 or 2018? There were just so many passionate arguments that you were seeing online about so many different sneakers. And it felt different than any other year. Like, of course, there are people who have their opinions about multiple sneakers in every year. But I feel like usually there's like a good two to three shoes that sort of people kind of agree are the main ones of the year. But this year it felt like it was it was double that. At least it's it's five, it's six, it's seven, it's eight. And then when you really sort of dig deeper into the conversation, you find that, oh, like there are a lot of people with a lot of different opinions on this.

2:07And so like we felt like this was something that we really wanted to dive deep on. Now, another story that you've been covering all year is Nike, which is in this seemingly endless turnaround project of theirs. I mean, how much of this like I was thinking of, you know, I asked you for a couple examples of years when there was a consensus. And the two examples you gave me were Jordans. And I'm curious how much of this is a Nike's fallen off its game story versus a lots of other brands are really stepping up kind of story. Oh, I think I think that's a lot of the story. I think that that is sort of the thing that's that's at the center of of the story, honestly.

2:43Like if you look at some of the resale data that we have in the story, like you can see that that there's been an uptick in sales in 2025. And part of that is Nike sort of getting back on its game with these hype silhouettes that people are loving. But at the same time, you've got challengers like Adidas, New Balance that are still sort of in that conversation, sort of still at the top, not necessarily as powerful as Nike is, but they still sort of matter in the conversation. And I think like what we are seeing this year is consumers saying, OK, like if the playing field is Nike versus the field.

3:23Right. Because Nike is the industry leader. I think a lot of people have decided I'm actually going to try the field for once and see see what what comes from it. And I think from that conclusion, like we see a lot of people who are having passionate opinions about all these different sneaker silhouettes and all these different brands. And it just makes for a very interesting conversation at the end of the year. Well, it's funny that you both say that because I remember, you know, my history working at Footwear News. Nike and Jordan didn't win shoe of the year every year. There was a lot of there was the Puma year.

3:57There were the Yeezy years. Like, I think we have to give the incumbents some credit for kind of coming out with more innovation recently. Like, it's just not Nike falling off and making room. It's probably a lot more hype coming from other brands. Like, they're doing something more innovative now than they were five years ago, right? Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. I think there are a lot of brands that are trying a lot of new and different things. I mean, we talked about Vans a bit earlier, or we mentioned Vans, I should say. And I think personally, for me, they have one of the best sneakers of the year with the old school 36, which is like an older Vans silhouette.

4:33But it's something that they took and gave it a bit of a luxury spin by sort of copying the design from the Chanel bag back in 2015, the messenger bag that everybody loves. And so you put that design on a sneaker and people gravitate toward it because it reminds them of that bag and it gives them that luxury feel. And that's something that Vans hasn't really done in the past, at least not recently. And so like when you see these brands sort of tinkering with these new ideas and playing in these new spaces, whether it be in luxury and fashion or with sports, for example, with Converse in their basketball shoe, like they're just brands are doing so many different innovative things.

5:19I think people are just kind of interested in and into. Mike, I was going to ask, so I mentioned earlier, like Vans was a surprise, Converse was a surprise. What was so special about this basketball sneaker that Converse launched? The Shea, right? Yeah, so it's the Shea 001. My personal favorite color is the Shea Butter, but they have like this family pack that has all these different colors in it. The Shea 001 is Shea Gildress Alexander's signature basketball shoe. He's the MVP of the NBA and the best player on the Oklahoma City Thunder NBA champion team. The shoe itself is, it's a signature basketball shoe.

5:55So that's something that hasn't really worked well over this last decade, really, I would say a decade plus at this point. You don't typically see signature shoes or performance shoes in general sort of being a part of this whole sneaker of the year conversation. But I think what really drove the Shea 001 into this convo was the fact that Shea is a person who cares a lot about fashion. Like they built that that shoe specifically so it could be worn on and off of the basketball court. That was a sort of edict from him when they were were developing this shoe in the process. And I think the changing styles where we're going back to that, like sort of Y2K baggy era kind of contributed to this as well.

6:41Like skinny jeans are not the biggest thing anymore. You've got people wearing baggier silhouettes. And it sort of works with the Shea 001 better, in my opinion, when you wear it that way. And then on top of that, I just think Shea's just a really cool player. And Converse put together a really cool marketing plan behind him. I personally thought it took a little bit too long to get there. Like, they showed the shoe in February. People couldn't buy it until September. But I also think that that might have contributed to a bit of the fervor around it, where people were just so eager to get these shoes.

7:15And when they could finally get them, they sold out immediately. And that's not something that you see typically with a performance basketball sneaker, but it's something that Converse was able to sort of manufacture around this hype following their star basketball player. Although it does get me thinking just back to what we were talking about before and about the Nike of it all. I mean, Converse is a Nike-owned brand, and I'm looking at the other shoes. You have this great chart in the story about the shoes that got the biggest premium in the resale market over retail. And the one we've been talking about is on there.

7:52But like, so every other one that involves an athlete is a Nike shoe. It's either a Jordan or a Nike. There's Caitlin Clark, LeBron. It seems like they still, maybe reports of Nike's demise are overstated, maybe is what I'm getting at here. I mean, the thing about Nike and its quote unquote demise, right, is that Nike has always and I mean, in my opinion, probably will always be the industry standard. Like the company is just too big at this point. It makes too much money. Even when it fails, it's still like a notch above its competition. Right. And so like we're living in a space where that I think still remains true, even as competitors are growing and getting better around it.

8:38And don't get me wrong, like there have definitely been legitimate threats to Nike's dominance over these last few years. But I do think that at the end of the day, the audience, the consumers, this is just a brand that they're used to. This is a brand that a lot of people have brand loyalty for. Like they're sort of born into that thing. And like you grow up, you see your parents wearing Nike, you want to wear Nike. You see your cousins wearing Nike, you want to wear Nike. And I think that that sort of mentality still sticks with with a lot of people. So we're always going to see Nike silhouettes in these conversations.

9:14But I think the question for me is, what are those silhouettes specifically? Like, is it the same ones that we're seeing, like from 2020 to 2024, there was a lot of Jordan 1, Jordan 3. There's a lot of Nike Dunk. Like, do we see bits and pieces of like sort of obscure models like the Jordan 17? Or do we see a different take on the Air Jordan 4? Like, what is it that's in this conversation that sort of makes it a little bit different than prior years? And I think for this year in particular, like we saw a lot of that. We saw the Infinity Archives 17. We see the Awake Jordan 5. We see Nigel's Jordan 4.

9:59The Shea, I count Converse in that Nike family because it's a Nike company. So I kind of count the Shea 001 as a Nike shoe. And like when you have that Nike stamp, it definitely helps. But I just think that seeing these different silhouettes sort of makes the conversation a little bit different for me. I also love that you took the polling to our BOF readership and I think you got like almost 200 people that wrote in votes or voted on a sneaker. And what I think the story talks about is that hype now is more about emotion than the scarcity or the marketing. Can you talk a little bit about what the storytelling looked like this year and why that was so important?

10:38Yeah, storytelling is always a big part of this conversation. I think for a lot of the lists out there that you see people making, whether it's, you know, your regular everyday consumer or a media outlet like us that sort of live and breathe this stuff, it always sort of comes down to which brand or which sneaker had the best execution in terms of marketing. And so like a shoe that I think a lot of people gravitate toward in this conversation this year is the Nigel Sylvester brick by brick Air Jordan 4. And Nike and Jordan brand kind of went over the top for that thing. I remember very early on in this year for the initial release, they drove a truck with like a big brick on it through New York City to let people know that this was a shoe that was coming.

11:27Nigel Sylvester himself always does his his go rides where he he's riding his bike through New York and and promoting his shoe like they just sort of go over the top. Just to jump in here. Nigel Sylvester is a BMX star, right? BMX star. Yes. Also, how is that not marketing? Like, you know, when people say they're feeling emotional, is it that he is so like to people like he feels so much more accessible or interesting that his storytelling or the storytelling around him clicked a little differently than Nike putting millions of dollars behind a campaign? Yeah, so I think it absolutely is marketing and it's very intentional.

12:03Like the story attached to the sneaker, which is like just to give a little bit of background on it. The whole brick by brick thing is is him saying that everything that he has earned in his life, he has built a brick by brick, step by step. And that's a story that I think at its core, a lot of people can relate to on an emotional level, which is like step number one for Nike in this case. And so like you take that, you build on it by connecting him with the people like you put him in this truck. He's driving this truck through New York. He's driving his bike through New York and he's seeing people.

12:37He's actually kissing babies, shaking hands, whatever, doing doing the whole thing. And like this just becomes a shoe that people even beyond the sneaker just grow attached to because they're attached to Nigel himself. And so that I would say, yeah, that that is absolutely marketing the shoe is as, you know, as charming as Nigel can be. And as nice as that is, like it's definitely behind the whole sneaker of the year campaign, I would say. They made it look like not marketing is probably the trick. You felt like you really got to know him and it was authentic and he is such an authentic personality.

13:10I bet that probably cinched it rather than a conventional advertisement. Absolutely.

13:19We'll be back with more of The Debrief right after this.

13:27You make a great point in this story that what we're talking about here is a very narrow slice of the sneaker market. there's another chart that looks at, okay, what shoes we're actually selling, setting aside this very elite group that we've been talking about. And it's soccer or football for our non-American reader inspired shoes. And it's running shoes, which are not represented as far as I can tell at all in the sneaker of the year conversation, right? I mean, has there always been such a disconnect between the hype sneakers and what regular people are actually wearing on their feet? Absolutely.

14:02I mean, if we talked about this conversation or if we had this conversation, I should say, about like pure sales or what people are actually wearing, then I think there would be a lot of years where you'd see like. Sketchers. Like the Nike Air Monarch. Yeah, the sketch, like you'd have whatever pair of Skechers you have. What's the resale premium on Sketchers exactly?

14:25Yeah, like the conversation would be would be in that in that that sphere. I actually asked Brendan Dunn, who works at StockX and has worked on the Complex Sneaker of the Year panel, this very question. And what he told me was that there's always a bit of a disconnect when it comes to the sort of regular run-of-the-mill everyday consumer who just wants a new pair of shoes. in the consumer who's a bit more engaged with this stuff, who is a bit more, maybe not exactly like a sneakerhead, but it's just somebody who is interested in this culture and just sort of knows about it. And like the Tom Sachs Marjard 3.0 had the highest premium on StockX's platform at 291%.

15:11Just to translate that into dollars, though, that retail, I mean, not that anyone could actually get it at retail, but for$275 and it was selling for more than a thousand dollars on StockX, right? Exactly. And so you've got that massive premium there. But if we wanted to talk about just in terms of raw sales and what moves on the platform, every single day you see people just buying the shoe up, he told me it was the black and silver Asics Gel 1130. This is just a common shoe that you could probably just go to your average footlocker and buy today. But I guess people just buy it off of the platform for convenience.

15:52And then there are a lot of people who buy these shoes up and try to resell them at volume. So it does make sense for it to sort of move on the platform in this way. But I just think that there's always going to be that sort of disconnect because there are people who just want regular everyday shoes that look cool. in that like make your regular everyday person sort of turn their head and ask what they're wearing. And the A6J 1130 is a shoe that does that, but everybody's not gonna be able to pay$1 ,000 or even want to pay$1 ,000, I should say, for something like a Marj or a 3.0. Like that's sort of out of the question.

16:31I'm getting offended being called regular repeatedly, Mike. The regular everyday. I'm just, none of my shoes in my closet have made the list. None of yours, Brian? None of your collectibles? I'm regular and proud of it. Regular and proud of it. Should we talk about what some of this is telling us about, you know, what's ahead in 2026 around the sneaker market? Like one area is obviously resale. It cooled a lot in the post Yeezy era. What are you seeing now that tells us that, you know, is this just another high, but we're back to being cool? Or what are we seeing in resale? Let's start there for 2026.

17:06Honestly, this is something that I've since we started writing the story, this is something that I've been thinking a lot about. Because like we said at the top, the way that I'm sort of seeing this now is that it's sort of become a Nike versus the field thing where a lot of people have decided that they're going to play the field a little bit more. And I guess I would also, to your earlier point, Sheena, I would also include Adidas in that conversation. They've consistently had really good shoes and have consistently been at the top of the marketplace. But I think like those brands are the ones when when they are releasing just high heat silhouettes month after month after month, they are the ones that that sort of drive that that resale market up.

17:54Right. Like and we see that reflected in the chart that we have in our story. And so like if this is truly the year when Nike's bounce back really kicks off like this, this thing really starts to hum and we see the brand come back in a major way, activating around the World Cup and the Milan Olympics in February. Like maybe this is a moment where like we do see that that resale market spike again and prices get crazy and people get annoyed because they can't buy the shoes that they want again. But then we don't have people talking about reselling the boo-boos or whatever. Like that is absolutely a possibility.

18:37But I tend to lean on the side that like I think this might be a little bit more permanent than people think. Like, I think that the brands that have sort of taken up the shelf space over these last few years are not going to be so quick to give that up again, especially with some of the creatives and collaborators that they have around their brands. Like, you've got Adidas working with Pharrell Heavy again. You've got New Balance with Joe Fresh Goods and activating with, like, Kith and Ame Leandor. Lay on door. I feel like I butchered that, but you guys know who I'm talking about. There are just so many brands doing so many interesting things that I think are not going to stop anytime soon.

19:23Nike may well recover and be back at its 2017 to 2020 phase again. We could see that, but I just think that these other brands are so good right now that I think we'll still see a more balanced market. And I think we might be having the same conversation over again next December. You really can't mention Lububu's around Sheena. I don't think she heard a word you said after that. I was grimacing. I was like, what do you mean, except Lububu's getting a resale value? Also, by the way, I think the creatives, I think the good opportunity here is around some of those creatives that have been maybe more under the radar that are getting a little of the spotlight, like a James Wittner, like a Joe Fresh Goods.

20:03I think that's also exciting for 2026. Yeah, I definitely agree. There are a lot of creatives, I think, that are doing really interesting things in the marketplace. And I would also say that, like, you look at a brand like Saucony and, I mean, Leigh just wrote the story about how Wolverine is sort of taken off behind the power of Maryland and Saucony and, like, what they've done, specifically Saucony, what it's done with this collaboration with J Tips and how far that thing has gone. And then, like, they just released a shoe with the rapper Westside Gun that like sold out immediately. So like these these shoes are legitimately connecting people or connecting with people in ways that I personally could not have imagined three and four years ago.

20:49And I just think that that brand sort of see the playbook now, like they see how to connect with consumers on a on a deeper level through celebrity, through athletes, through influencers. And in that that's not really going away. I think it's also giving more power to the creatives to execute on their ideas is really important. And you and Lei talked to some of those creatives, Mike, for this article. I was curious, you know, what's their take on the state of the market now? And did they gravitate toward the Nikes and Adidas of the world? Or were they kind of embracing this new vision and picking some more obscure brands or smaller brands?

21:30Oh, my. the the brands that they pick i i was honestly surprised in in our conversations with them and what what we we brought back so so leah and i sort of split up we had a list of like 30 to 35 people that we were like we need to talk to these people and we knew everyone wouldn't come back so so we just put out feelers reached out to people to to see simply what their sneaker of the year was and a lot of people a lot of these people worked on sneakers before so like the caveat was that you can't pick your own sneaker. And if you work with a brand to promote a sneaker, like you can't pick that sneaker, but like, just what is your sneaker of the year?

22:07And so I thought a lot of people were going to come back with, with sort of like boilerplate answers. They were going to give us either the, the Nigel Sylvester, Jordan four, or the Adidas jellyfish. And that was, that was just going to be most of it. But I'm going to tell you, man, like there were a lot of people who picked a lot of different things. Like I was, I was genuinely surprised by the number of people who picked like things that I hadn't even thought would be in the conversation. So Lois Sockony, who, who I reached out to and Lois is, is great. Like she, she is the editor at over at, uh, at the Snob at, uh, Substack.

22:46And so she writes about the industry. She, She also works in finance and everything. So she's got like a really good grasp on what is moving people and what people think about the industry right now. And she picked the Jacques Mu Nike Moonshoe collaboration. And that was like it recently came out. So I guess it wasn't at the top of my mind as far as like sneaker of the year conversations. But the point that she made was that like this was was Nike sort of getting in on that that like low cut, thin soul silhouette movement that the rest of the industry has has been on. And while they've had other attempts like this is absolutely the best one and should be recognized for that.

23:31And when I read that, I found myself being like, yeah, actually, like this is actually just a really, really neat sneaker that like people probably it's not going to be at the top of a lot of people's minds. I know a lot of people didn't get these, but this is just one that like really took me aback. And then there was Trevon Edwards who works over at JD Sports and he picked the Shade 001. But the thing was for him that like the sneaker of the year conversation is one that is like it's sort of fluid to him. It's a conversation that a lot of people like you can pick a lot of different things. But the one thing that he pointed out to me that he thinks that a lot of people get wrong is like picking retro sneakers as their sneaker of the year in the current year.

24:18And one thing that he said that really stood out to me was that no retro shoe should be a sneaker of the year. And I find myself agreeing with that a lot. Like you can't pick a shoe that came out in 1985 as the sneaker of the year in 2025. Like I just don't feel like it should work that way. But that's not an opinion that I think a lot of people share. A lot of people would bring voice to. And so these were like the interesting, interesting conversations that we were having with these street wearers, sneaker aficionados, these experts. And and like it really opened my mind to like maybe this. Those conversations are honestly the reason why I think next year will probably be more of the same, because I think that the opinions that these people were bringing to the table are not opinions that are sort of easily discarded or thrown away.

25:09Like, I don't think that Nike and maybe this is me underestimating Nike and Adidas, but I just don't think Nike and Adidas can drop any one shoe that will make people be like, yeah, this is just the thing now. I think we're we're past that. We are nearing the end here. And I have one last question for you, Mike, which is what is your sneaker of the year? My sneaker of the year. I wrote about this in the Kicks You Wear newsletter. So if you haven't read that already, go subscribe and read it. But so Leigh and I made our own picks for Sneaker of the Year. I personally picked the Stillwater New Balance 2000.

25:45This is not a collaboration. It's just a regular, it's just a regular shoe. It's just a regular shoe, honestly. It is more along the lines of the black and silver Asics Jell 1130 than the Tom Sacks Marjard. But this was a shoe that I legitimately could not wait to purchase. It's one that I was really happy that I bought and one that just made my entire summer. It's extremely comfortable, which at 33 years old, like comfort is probably the number one thing on my list at this point. I feel like once you cross that 30-year-old threshold, like that's when you get like you stop buying shoes for the look and you start buying for the feel.

26:27And that one was one that felt great to me. It also looked great. I think it's the flyest shoe of this year for me. And it also was just something new. Like this was a new model from New Balance. It's a complete remake of something that they made in that Y2K era. But it's like it's totally different as far as like the build and in the structure and what it looks like. And it also just breaks New Balance's rules. Like they typically have like these shoes that have these premium suede and nice touches and multiple layers. And this upper is just like it's just one mesh layer. And it's very simple.

27:05It's to the point. And I love the color. It's just it's just my favorite sneaker of the year. So that's that's what I picked. It's very bland. It's very boring, but it's very me. I love that you called it regular. The word regular is redeemed now for the day. My people. No, I just love that it took us until about 30 minutes in to talk about, are any of these shoes actually comfortable to wear? I mean, not relevant to this conversation, honestly. Mike, thank you so much for joining us today. I think that's a nice note to end on. Thanks so much for having me. Really appreciate you guys. And I also want to give out a big shout out to my guy, Leigh, who really did his thing with this one.

27:43Like, teaming up was great. And we should talk about why he's not here. I don't know if anyone wants to drop the news, but he's literally getting married as we're recording this podcast. That's why he couldn't join us today. Congrats, Leigh. Congrats, Leigh. Please be sure to check out Mike and Leigh's article, The Sneakers That Mattered Most in 2025, at businessoffashion.com. These and other stories are available to BOF professional subscribers only, and you can find the links in the episode notes. You've been listening to The Debrief, produced and edited by Olivia Davies and Eric Bria. I'm Sheena Butler-Young.

28:14And I'm Brian Baskin. We'll be back next week with a new episode. Thanks so much for joining us and be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts.