Triple S Sketch Sneakers — Black/White, US 8 / EU 41

Demna Gvasalia sent Triple S down the Fall 2017 Balenciaga runway as three shoes stacked into one: molds from a running shoe, a basketball shoe and a track shoe fused into a single exaggerated sole, first in silvertone mesh and patent leather. The Sketch version keeps that architecture and changes the argument. It is leather-free, built from double foam and mesh, and the black-and-white print is laid across the upper and the sole alike, so the layers read less as engineering than as a line drawing of a sneaker draped over a real one. Where the 2017 original spoke through metallic mesh and patent, this one speaks through surface alone.

The upper is double foam and mesh with no leather anywhere, and the sketch print carries without a break from the mesh down onto the complex three-layer outsole, which stands roughly 2.5 inches (6.4 cm) tall. Size is embroidered at the very edge of the toe, a logo is embroidered on the side, and another is embossed across the back, while a rubber Triple S tag sits on the tongue. Lacing runs through twelve fabric eyelets, with a bicolor lace that borrows from hiking boots and one functional lace loop, and pull tabs at the heel and tongue finish the opening.

Read it as a hybrid of the dad shoe and the technical drawing: a hiking-laced, stacked-sole trainer flattened into a cartoon of itself, then given back its volume. It suits the person who finds the original Triple S too literal, and who would prefer the bulk as a rumor rendered in ink. Size US 8 (EU 41).