New Balance 550 Sea Salt Black

Released on 7 April 2022 and part of New Balance's 550 line. This release has a leather upper in Sea Salt/Black. Sea Salt is an off white with warmth in it, and against black it gives the 550 a softer edge than a bright white base would. That matters on a court silhouette, where the only variables are shape and colour blocking. The BB code marks the shoe's basketball origin, though almost nobody wears it for that now, and the low leather cut is what makes it useful. New Balance never designed this shape to be fashionable; it designed it to work on a court, and the fact that it now sits under trousers in offices is the same accident that turned grey running shoes into design objects two decades earlier.