Just over a month before Rihanna made her pregnancy announcement in red Maison Margiela MM6 x Salomon Cross Lows during the Super Bowl LVII halftime show, StockX called Salomon the world's fastest-growing sneaker brand. With a 2,227 percent increase in trades on the resale platform, it took the top spot by a landslide.
Launched in 1947, the brand was built for outdoor athletes. However, a decade ago, Salomon released the sneaker that would take the brand beyond being a favorite of hikers, trail runners and adventure folk: the XT-6.
“They’re my preference for a little more technical run — more rocky and hilly,” says David Jou, cofounder of the Manhattan-based physical therapy and fitness studio MotivNY. He remembers first seeing them on professional trail runners like Kílian Jornet. “He put Salomon on the map for trail enthusiasts like myself.”
In the last few years, the brand has done collaborations with Kith, Gore-Tex, and Costs and Children of the Discordance for the XT-6, but 2015's Snowcross collab with a French boutique represents the brand’s first earnest foray into fashion.
“Everybody thinks [Salomon] Sportstyle is three years old, and in reality, it’s become more available since early 2019.” says George Egan, Salomon's North American director of Sportstyle. Although the official collection launched in 2018, “it was 2015 when The Broken Arm actually reached out,” Salomon’s North American director of Sportstyle, George Egan, says.
During 2016, the XT-6 made its runway debut for the Boris Bidjan Saberi menswear spring/summer ’17 show in Paris. Models wore versions that had been dyed yellow, but the designer himself sported a black pair.
Los Angeles-based brand consultant Dave Marshall first recalls seeing Shia LaBeouf in Salomon boots, but it was the Broken Arm collab and seeing Pusha T regularly wear the XT-6s through 2017 and 2018 that led him to purchase his first pair — limited edition S/LAB XT-6 Softgrounds in Beige. “I was working at Dover Street [Market in New York] at the time, and they seemed to be making their American invasion.” Marshall also recalls Throwing Fits podcasters Lawrence Schlossman and James Harris wearing them around the same time.
Journalist Jason Chen coined the term “gorpcore” in a 2017 story for The Cut, simply giving a name to fashion co-opting more utilitarian, outdoors apparel and footwear for aesthetic reasons over function.
“When the outdoor footwear trend grew, I think people were looking for things that were very technical looking and designed but not super ‘granola,’” says Bryan Diaz, Salomon’s Sportstyle marketing lead.
Then, in mid-2020, Americans were driven to spend more time outdoors following the initial periods of isolation as the Covid-19 pandemic spread worldwide. With the unprecedented unemployment and the rise in remote work, national parks across the US saw a sharp spike in visitation. This increase in people adventuring further into remote parts of the country made for an even wider adoption of both the outdoors lifestyle and the gear.
Jou recalls his interest in trail running being accelerated by the pandemic, as well as seeing a lot more XT-6s moving around Soho.
“If I can credit New York, I feel New York started wearing them and we started seeing a lot of growth,” Diaz says.
“You can still get outside in the city. It could be walking down the street and hanging at your local coffee shop or going to the park with friends,” Egan says. “That's the beauty of where Sportstyle sits within our ecosystem — there's absolutely no guardrails.”
In 2013, Salomon didn’t set out to expand into streetwear. The XT-6 was and remains function first and gimmickless, different from a lot of hype shoes in the sneaker space today. It’s the best selling Salomon silhouette on StockX and makes up a little over half of the trades on the platform. “A large part of their success had to do with the people who embraced them and the culture. People just thought the shoe was cool," Marshall says.
"And it actually is."
A version of this story first appeared in Gear Patrol Magazine. Subscribe today
