Louis Vuitton Sneaker Is Silicon Valley’s Latest Status Symbol

NEW YORK, United States — What if I were to tell you that the most happening sneaker on the red-hot resale market wasn't a $1,269 pair of Adidas Yeezy Boosts or a $1,515 retro Air Jordan design, but a high-top released by a French brand known for leather travel trunks and monogrammed handbags?

At the moment, rare and high-end sneakers are so highly valued that their re-sale prices can exceed the original sticker price. Shoppers most often find pre-owned kicks on sites like Stock X or eBay, where a bid of $1,750 might win a pair of Nike 4 Graffiti NYC Lebron basketball shoes. There is another market, though, for sneakers made by fashion brands such as Lanvin and Gucci.

One example is the Real Real, an online luxury shop where you can find a vintage Hermès bag, a set of Lalique Champagne flutes, and a $1,200 pair of black nylon Chanel high-tops with tonal stitching, contrasting rubber soles, and quilted leather insoles. This is a meaningful indicator for fashion brands, which can offer steeper markups on the accessories that make up a key part of their profit margins.

To find out which of these are actually highly sought after, we asked the Real Real to give us a geographic break-down of its top-selling sneakers.

As a whole, anti-flashy white low-tops dominate. In New York, and in the nation at large, the Real Real’s best-seller is the Common Projects Achilles low-top.

Made in Italy since 2004, the Common Projects shoe is a durable, smartly constructed sneaker that refuses to go out of style. It’s simpler than a Stan Smith and, starting at $375, is only about five times the price. Part of its beauty is its inconspicuousness. No one will ever say, “What are those?,” largely is because anyone inclined to do so already knows.

A San Francisco Treat

But when the Real Real broke down the data to focus only on San Francisco and Silicon Valley, a list otherwise marked by the minimalism of Lanvin and Givenchy shoes revealed a flamboyant outlier at the top spot: the Louis Vuitton Damier high-top.

Louis Vuitton has produced the shoe in many styles, but they all share the same basic scheme, and the Graphite Heroes model pictured here is, on the Real Real, is the most popular style of the most popular sneaker in San Francisco and its techiest environs.

The shoe, which is no longer in production, sold for $745 at retail and typically now moves for around $500 in very good condition. Resembling a hybrid of a vintage pair of Ponys and a pair of Vans, it is opposite of understatement.

And in this context, the checkered pattern (a Louis Vuitton logotype since 1888) encourages comparison to another, different style of Vans. In other situations, these shoes might invite comparisons to ladies’ handbags, but the creators of this distinctive pattern seem to have stumbled into a sweet spot and accidentally created the Bay Area’s most high-end skater shoe.

The complete list of the top five bestselling sneakers on the Real Real—broken down by cities San Francisco and New York City and the US overall—is below:

United States

Common Projects Achilles low-top
Buscemi 100MM high-top
Balenciaga Arena high-top
Valentino Garavani Rockrunner
Adidas X Yeezy Boost 350 V2

After the Common Projects shoe is the Buscemi 100MM. In any color, the Buscemi makes even an electric-blue Arena look as discrete as an undertaker’s oxford. Let’s talk about the 18-carat-gold-plated padlocks on the ankles. I thought it possible that these ornaments might represent commentary on the absurd values ascribed to luxury sneakers in general. (Which would qualify the shoes as witty.) The designer is now offering a $132,000 version featuring locks decorated with 11.5 carats of diamonds. (Which qualifies it as a thoughtful gift for the most cherished member of your entourage.)

The Balenciaga Arena is in third place here, a lambskin number unifying themes introduced by the fifth- and fourth-place sneakers. It is purely a fashion item—it looks like a hiking boot for walking an extremely arduous red carpet—and, as paparazzi photos show, it hasmet the approval of Kim Kardashian's husband. Kanye West, he of the Yeezy, has boasted that he is responsible for 50 percent of Balenciaga's shoe sales; just because he's an egomaniac doesn't mean he's incorrect.

While a running shoe like the Boost makes plausible claims about the technology that helps some people actually run well in it, the Rockrunner prefers to direct shoppers’ attention to the series of rubberized pyramidal studs standing proud as any logo at the heel stabilizer. Striking but not loud, arty but unpretentious, it is generally a likeable shoe, as long as we concede that the only athletic activity for which it is correct is brunch.

New York City

Common Projects Achilles low-top
Balenciaga Arena high-top
Maison Margiela Replica low-top
Adidas x Yeezy Boost 350 V2
Gucci Ace low-top

There’s a lot of overlap with the US in general, and the significant differences only force us to conclude that New Yorkers are relatively less susceptible to the gleaming gimmick of Buscemi hardcore hardware. The luxury-shoe-shopping men of the New York are clearly enamoured of the low-key: The Maison Margiela Replica is basically the running-shoe analog of the Common Project Achilles, and the Gucci Ace is likewise subdued.

San Francisco