Here's Why the Yeezy Foam Runner Is the Future of Footwear

When it comes to the Yeezy Foam Runner, there’s no beating around the bush. While it might not be the best looking shoe ever by today’s standards, if you look past all of this and examine what Kanye West was really trying to achieve, it’s easy to see how and why the Foam RNNR is a sneak peek into the future of footwear.

One of the most popular sneakers of 2021 so far, the original colourway continues to sell for 720% over retail, making the average sale price on marketplaces such as StockX a whopping £456. It also sold out in seconds when it launched last summer, making it one of the fastest selling Yeezys in history.

To come up with it, Ye recruited legendary sneaker designer Steven Smith back in 2016 to head Yeezy’s design division. This marked a massive shift in the game as two of the industry’s most creative minds collided. In an interview with the man himself, The Sole Supplier asked Smith to name a moment in his career that he’ll never forget. After thinking for a moment, he explained: “When Kanye reached out to me to start working together. It was a completely alternative future for me. It has been a life changing experience.”

The power duo went on to create some of the most breathtaking sneakers in history. From the Yeezy Boost 700, which arguably kickstarted the chunky dad shoe trend back in 2017, all the way to 2020’s Yeezy 450, each one was more unique than the next, but nothing even comes close to the Yeezy Foam Runner and the impact that it has made.

Picture this: It’s the summer of 2019 and you’re casually roaming the streets of Calabasas, California. All of a sudden, you spot Kim Kardashian and North West queuing for something, but you’re way more interested in what they have on-feet.

Is it a slide? Is it a sneaker? It’s hard to define exactly what you’re seeing at that moment in time, but you can only describe it as the Crocs Classic Clog but on steroids. Little did you know that this shoe is the result of thousands and thousands of hours of trial and error across hundreds and hundreds of prototypes and models. The Foam RNNR was unlike anything out there, and it was just getting started.

After five months of nothing but silence, Kanye West and Steven Smith surprised the world by stepping out on-stage holding the very first retail pair of the Yeezy, and this was the exact moment that the industry changed for good. During Day 3 of the Fast Company Innovation Festival, the pair flaunted the extraterrestrial-like footwear in front of a live audience. “This is just the beginning of the future that Kanye envisioned for us to start working on.” stated Smith.

Manufactured from a petroleum-based ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA), the amazing thing about this particular Yeezy silhouette is the fact that it’s also partly made from algae, making it the footwear brand’s first vegan trainer. Unlike conventional materials such as leather and suede, making shoes from algae can actually help the environment in many ways. Not only is it a renewable resource, but because of things like rising temperatures, the world often finds that it has way too much algae resulting in even bigger problems.

For instance, when algae dies it gets eaten by bacteria which takes in oxygen from water. This means that fish and other sea creatures can suffocate and die off in great numbers. A high concentration of algae can also be harmful to humans as the cyanobacteria that’s produced is toxic to our bodies. This can cause abdominal pain and severe respiratory paralysis. To put it in Layman's Terms, nobody wants either of these things.

“We’re getting into how we can have less impact with the dyes, because our colour is a big signature of the brand, but also dyeing is one of the main things that’s impacting the planet in the fashion industry.” said Ye. “So just being responsible from A to Z in what happens.”

While adidas probably won’t take this manufacturing method full scale, for now anyway, it still plays a huge part in their plans to become one of the most sustainable companies on Earth. Over the past two decades, the German giant has been listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and continues to change and adapt their processes in the hope of a more environmentally-friendly future. For instance, last year they created around 20 million pairs of shoes such as the NMD and the Ultra Boost with Parley ocean plastic.

In 2019, the brand collected the equivalent of 4.5 billion plastic bottles for its recycled apparel range, and on top of that, the Three Stripes aims to only use recycled polyester from 2024 onwards and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030. This massive commitment is supported by the introduction of various new projects, including the Stan Smith Mylo which is crafted from mushrooms and, to take it back to the topic of Kanye, reworking all Yeezys like the "Bred" and "Zyon" with Primeblue which is made with 50% upcycled plastic waste.

The sky is the limit for the Yeezy Foam RNNR. Yeezy currently isn’t harvesting algae from public bodies of water and is getting it from their own hydroponic farm in their headquarters in Cody, Wyoming, but this is the first time that any fashion label has used this plant at such a large scale. While the clog’s design definitely isn’t for everyone, in the very near future, Ye’s brand could use this sustainable material across all of its sneakers and apparel, creating a truly 100% renewable future, not just for fashion, but for the world.

“We’re building farms here, because of the climate and because of the soil, that have hydroponic cotton, wheat, hemp. We’re developing our own fabrics and we’re gonna go from ‘seed to sew,’ from farm to table so we can see the entire process... We gotta sustain, right?” said Kanye West during an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “We need to be working for a renewal of the planet and a humility in humanity to understand that we will not destroy the earth — we could destroy the resources and we could destroy ourselves.”

That's one small step for Kanye, one giant leap for mankind.