Get Ready to See Everyone You Know Wearing Margiela Sprinters

Inspired by Nike's enduring 1972 Moon Shoe, Margiela adds another infinity stone to its footwear collection with the Sprinters.

Listen: Antônio Carlos Jobim - Lamento

A fifty year old pair of sneakers sold for nearly half a million dollars in 2019. Now, on the one hand, most people would find such a financial expenditure bordering insanity. After all, they’re just sneakers.

Me? Well, having written about sneakers and fashion and the industry surrounding them for the better part of a decade, the news didn’t necessarily strike me as odd. Although, if there was anything universally true about such a purchase, is that it’s REALLY odd.

The sneaker in question is Nike’s Moon Shoe - a performance-based relic produced in anticipation of the 1972 Summer Olympic trails before the games descended upon an unsuspecting (at least from a historical sense) Munich, Germany. Swoosh co-founder and Oregon University track coach, Bill Bowerman, is credited with designing the time-honored shoe. 12 pairs were created in total; even fewer made it to the 21st century. And of the lingering track racers that hadn’t disintegrated into a pile of spike-filled ash, one pair found it’s way into a 2019 Sotheby’s auction.

The cultural keepsake - without question among the most enduring odes to Nike’s cherished history - sold to a private collector for $437,500.

About four and half years later, just before the wildly sad yet predictable departure of creative director John Galliano, we caught a first glimpse of Margiela’s Sprinters. A creation no doubt in ode to the Moon Shoe, if not simply a modern Replica (you knew I’d do it), fashion forums quickly had something to obsess over that wasn’t a Tabi or the brands tried and true Germany Army Trainer.