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New Balance's 550 sneakers were released by the Boston-based brand in 1989 following a surge in popularity of low-top basketball-inspired footwear, such as the Nike Dunk Low.
Created by legendary sneaker designer Steven Smith (the guy behind multiple Yeezy sneaks, as well as Nike's Shox Monster and Air Streak Spectrum Plus), the model debuted with the name “P550 Basketball Oxford”. It featured smooth leather uppers, perforated profile panels and lightweight mesh bases offered more underfoot breathability than previous New Balance sneaks, notably the 480 and 650 designs. While the minimalist sneaks looked the part, they never really took off on court due to competition from established brands such as Jordan and Reebok, and New Balance stopped producing them.
Today, however, the 550 sneakers are having a moment. Back in 2020 Teddy Santis, founder of Aimé Leon Dore, reached out to New Balance to bring back the 550. Joe Grondin, senior manager of global collaborations at New Balance, told SneakerFreaker at the time, “he found this random picture of the 550. We started researching hashtags on Instagram and found this collector who had a pair. Once we got the shoe in hand we built it from scratch with Teddy.”
With Aimé Leon Dore, New Balance released their first collaborative sneakers in September 2020, and threw them back into the spotlight. They sold out immediately, which prompted music mogul Rich Paul to co-design a pair, as well as Comme Des Garçons, which will release two pairs later this year. New Balance has also released a string of its own branded sneaks in different colourways following the ADL success, which have been seen on the feet of Hailey and Justin Bieber, Bella Hadid, Jack Harlow and Kendall Jenner.
Today, the 550 sneakers are extremely hard to come by. Not only are they unavailable to purchase in bricks and mortar stores, but the sneaks are difficult to locate on the web, mainly due to New Balance's irregular restocking of the model and the surge in demand for them. Case in point: over on global shopping app Lyst there's currently an average of 500 searches per day for 550s, while they are the most-wanted New Balance sneaker model on the site.
Fortunately, the New Balance 550s are getting a surprise rerelease (and we heard about it first). The all-white and Red and White pairs, which released in 2021 and have since not been stocked anywhere aside from resale sits such as StockX and Farfetch, are going on sale today at New Balance'.
Consider this your chance to own a pair of "It" sneakers.
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