JJJJound’s latest Reebok Club C 85 collaboration is tough to put in words — it’s really out-there! Like, an all-black Reebok sneaker? What?! How do they think up this stuff?!?
Okay, sarcasm aside, there actually is reason to be excited about JJJJound’s “Core Black” Reebok Club C show collab, which the Canadian company is dropping as part of the Fall/Winter 2023 season.
One factor to consider is that JJJJound almost exclusively creates collaborative shoes in earth tones or, most commonly, all-white colorways.
No foolin’: be they from Reebok, Salomon, or Vans, sneakers receiving the JJJJound touch are almost always realized in blinding white, to the point where “NPC” feels less like a sneaker model’s name and more like a self-aware descriptor of JJJJound’s anonymous design principles.
So, just the fact that the JJJJound x Reebok FW23 Club C is black actually is kinda interesting. Kinda.
There are two factors that I’d consider even more interesting, though: firstly, JJJJound’s black Reebok Club C already dropped, apparently.
According to several folks in the UK and Europe, regional Reebok web stores already offered limited pairs of JJJJound’s FW23 sneaker collab online earlier this year. Several pairs are currently available for just over the $160 retail price on secondhand sites.
Whoops! Not sure what happened there. Or, maybe it wasn’t even a mistake. Who’s to say?
But, most importantly, JJJJound’s forthcoming Reebok Club C is interesting because of its fabrication. Made of a soft, sorta washed-out nubuck, JJJJound’s latest Reebok puts all the emphasis on form and texture.
This goes back to the roots of JJJJound’s own appeal: sure, folks are primarily drawn to JJJJound’s goings-ons by way of its aspirationally pared-back visual identity and inimitable iconography, but JJJJound’s best quality is really just in how good the Montreal-based brand is at getting to the bones of what makes stuff appealing.
A nice pair of jeans, a sturdy tote bag, a pair of New Balances fabricated from perfectly plain suede: at its peak, JJJJound is capable of serving nakedly appealing products made strong not by in-your-face logos but through appreciably unpretentious and laser-precise fabrication.
JJJJound and Reebok’s humble black sneakers do that better than the white shoes, simply because they already look lived-in and will only get better with creases and crumples. And that’s something to get excited about.
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