THE HILL-SIDE ARE BRINGING BACK VELCRO SNEAKERS IN A WHOLE NEW WAY.

You’ll be sure to make me happy at the idea of velcro fastened shoes, because I have always secretly longed for my childhood pair of ankle high sneakers that so conveniently closed and had me on my way in no time. The velcro sneaker to me is special like Proust and his madeleine, for me the sound of unstrapping a pair is so nostalgic. It has the power to transport me back to a specific moment in time.

So our friends The Hill-Side have genuinely wizard-ed their way into our shoe hall of fame with their just released Bridge Mid Sneaker, a brainchild of theirs that apparently came from a 70s US military ‘Delta Shoe’, but to us its something of a hybrid of the WW2 chukka (maybe familiar now to you as the desert boot) with the herringbone sole of a clay court tennis shoe.

In a nutshell this piece of footwear masterwork seems to be built for hot and dry conditions. It’s been constructed with a natural duck canvas finish (the white pair pictured above and below) as well as a special edition khaki version developed with Kaptain Sunshine in Japan. The duck canvas pair sport a wide elastic velcro strap closure across the bridge of the foot, cotton fabric upper, canvas-backed foxing tape, vulcanized natural rubber foxing tape, and THS’s signature herringbone pattern rubber outsole. Its alter ego, the collaboration shoe, features three different military inspired olive drab fabrics: back satin, ripstop, and herringbone twill, brought together on a black sole. All the meantime they would both be great for wading and diving, as well as for down time in extremely wet and humid conditions – just how the Delta shoe was designed for 40 years ago.

So they really kick any kind of Yeezy boost out of the water, in fact it sounds offensive to even draw comparison. To me they are a real design feat, built off decades of historical development. They speak to our past while looking incredibly next-century which makes them not everybody’s cup of tea perhaps, but definitely deserve recognition (especially over the ego-shoe-kin-stein of a loudmouth rapper). These definitely don’t need to ride on hype or pretension, but will sit wonderfully in the halls of fame for great engineering feats and rad style.