2021’s First Sneaker Trend Is Here: Introducing The Blob

Lately, the cutting edge of sneakers has begun to look round. Not simply soft, but volumetric, fat, chubby. Call it blobby. These are not shoes—they’re shooze. King among the shooze is the Pyer Moss Sculpt. That sneaker actually debuted in designer Kerby Jean-Raymond’s show at the Brooklyn Kings Theatre in October of 2019, but it hit the market just this past November in black and yellow, and swiftly sold out. Shooze move slowly: a new colorway, yellow and white, drops this Friday. (Though Jean-Raymond does double-duty as the creative director of Reebok, these sneakers were introduced under the Pyer Moss banner alone, and, accordingly, are priced to the tune of $595.) When I first saw them the fall before last, they struck me as a blobbier take on the Raf Simons Ozweego, which appeared to snap an Adidas sneaker into a blocky, rubbery or metallic protective base. A year later, emerging during Jean-Raymond’s banner year, they looked more like a prescient pronouncement for American fashion domination. Read more at GQ.