New Balance 550 Oreo

Panda colourways are foolproof if you stay in the palette. Recipe one: black wide leg trousers, a white tee, a black cap, letting the shoe complete a two colour outfit rather than interrupt it. Recipe two: raw indigo jeans with a white shirt and a black leather belt, where the contrast panels echo the belt and the denim supplies the only colour. This is a low, flat shoe, so it takes a full break trouser better than any runner here. Care splits by colour: leather cleaner and a cream polish on the black, a foam cleaner and midsole eraser on the white, and shoe trees to stop the toe box folding hard.

New Balance's team roster runs deep into American sport, from the Boston Red Sox and the New York Mets to the NBA, which is the backdrop against which a court shoe like this reads as legitimate rather than costume. But the 550's real momentum came from fashion's rediscovery of ordinary American sportswear, the same current that turned grey suede runners into design objects and that the brand formalised by appointing Aime Leon Dore founder Teddy Santis as creative director of Made in USA in April 2021. Black and white is where that current is at its most usable. It looks like a basketball shoe, dresses like a leather sneaker, and asks nothing of your wardrobe.

Leather panels in black are set against a white leather base, so the contrast does the styling work that texture does elsewhere in the range. That split has a practical consequence: the black panels will scuff pale and the white ones will grey, and the two problems need different fixes. The platform is a low court sole rather than a cushioned running unit, which keeps the stance sharp and the ride firm, and it is the reason the 550 sits comfortably under tailoring where a chunkier New Balance runner would not. Width fittings, the brand's oldest technical promise from its arch support origins, matter here because a stiff leather cupsole gives you very little forgiveness in the first week.