New Balance 9060 "Black/White" Sneakers

High contrast reads best against solid colour. Recipe one: black wide leg trousers and a white tee under a black overshirt, a monochrome outfit where the shoe's split matches the whole look. Recipe two: mid wash denim, a black knit and a white cap or bag detail, so the shoe's second colour finds an echo higher up. Good for city days, evenings and travel, but the white sections will show grime fast in wet weather. Check the width fitting given the sculpted footbed. Clean white panels early and often, brush mesh sections dry, keep the black surfaces free of dust, and air dry away from heat.

The 9060 gets away with being strange because New Balance earned decades of credibility being plain. The 990 family became the archetypal American dad shoe, worn for comfort rather than status, favoured by Steve Jobs and worn by Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner and Hilary Duff, and normcore then high fashion reclaimed that plainness in the 2010s. High contrast is the opposite instinct, a shoe that wants to be seen, and it works as a counterpoint within a brand whose default is restraint. Since April 2021, with Aime Leon Dore founder Teddy Santis leading Made in USA, treating the archive as a live design language has been official.

Two tone colour blocking on a sculpted shoe is a difficult trick, because contrast can easily break a complicated silhouette into unrelated pieces. Here the black and white split follows the 9060's panel structure, so the divisions look designed rather than accidental, and the sculpted midsole reads as a single continuous form. The block N sits on the side wall as the fixed reference point. New Balance's cushioning heritage runs through ENCAP, a moulded polyurethane rim around a soft EVA core supplying structure, durability and low compression set, and ABZORB, the softer foam and rubber polymer blend for dispersing heel strike. Width fittings remain part of the sizing decision across the range.