Slack's new sneakers are more boring than a work chat
The collab we deserve, not the one we wanted
October 9th, 2020
The American footwear brand Cole Haan has collaborated with the communication platform Slack to create a line of sneakers in a limited edition: the Slack x Cole Haan Generation ZERØGRAND. There was a time when these bizarre collaborations were played on the field of hoodies and T-shirts, much safer terrain and suitable to accommodate graphics and logos, but today the wave has headed to the field of sneakers, of which Lidl produced a pair few months ago and also Sony in collaboration with Zara. The only problem is that producing a valid sneaker is a very different problem from having a T-shirt printed: the last decent "corporate sneaker" dates back to the 90s and is the one created by Apple for its employees of the time, today so rare and sought after that a single pair is worth as much as ten iPhones of the latest generation.
The aesthetic of the sneaker, which remains a product to which you can feel a certain ironic tenderness, unfortunately has nothing anyway with that freshness aesthetic of which Steve Jobs was master and that no one, after him, has been able to replicate. The sneaker faithfully incorporates the pre-existing model of the Generation ZERØGRAND by changing its colorway and branding with Slack's logos and colors. The shoe consists of a twisted Stitchlite tome™ and a cushioned sole. Each of the colors in the Slack logo (green, yellow, red and blue) represents a different sole colorway while the logo itself decorates the heel of each sneaker.