Three Pairs That Prove Why Teddy Santis and New Balance Are the Perfect Match

We’d be surprised to find a single sneakerhead who hasn’t heard of Teddy Santis by now. The New York native started the streetwear brand Aimé Leon Dore back in 2014, and has since gone strength to strength within the sneaker scene, going from frequent New Balance collaborator to Creative Director of the Boston-based brand’s Made in USA line in just a few short years.

Santis is actually Greek, but having grown up in The Big Apple, his entire brand has evolved to focus on gritty tailoring and street-style influences, and the grown-up streetwear look of ALD marries perfectly with New Balance’s leisurely dad-style aesthetic. Having no fashion degree, Santis’ rise to fame is slightly unconventional, relying solely on a solid business plan and on having great taste - as well as streetwear’s ever-hungry audience.

Growing up, Santis played a lot of basketball, so reviving the New Balance 550 seemed a natural point of focus for the 2020 ALD partnership. Originally designed by a fresh-faced Steven Smith, the OG 550 was actually dubbed the P550 Basketball Oxford, and was originally made from a mix of leather and mesh. At the time, it wasn’t quite technical enough to carve itself a career on the court, so was put back in its box until Santis got hold of it 37 years later.

Santis drew on the emerging retro basketball shoe trend that saw the Jordan 1 and adidas Forum surge in popularity. The result was a series of must-have 550s that stayed true to the shoe’s retro look and feel, and although the ALD pairs were a seriously hard cop, the silhouette managed to stick around thanks to a number of GR options.

After killing it in the collab game, Santis joined New Balance in 2021, where he was tasked with heading up the brand’s legendary local-made line. For a year things remained relatively quiet while Santis and his team worked hard in the background, but as soon as 2022 rolled around he was ready to reveal his vision for the line. The result? A collection of three generations of the New Balance 990 silhouette, in some seriously covetable colourways.

Though the 990 is now one of the brand’s bestselling silhouettes, it’s still the very shoe that managed to land New Balance its reputation as a dad brand. It was only a couple of years ago that the brand poked fun at itself for this very reason in its “Worn by Supermodels in London and Dads in Ohio” campaign, but when you think about it, the sneaker has always been a bit of a normcore legend, with each version of the shoe having its own dedicated audience and therefore that IKYK vibe. For this reason, the 990 is the perfect silhouette to marry up with both Santis’ personal brand, and the very defined Aimé Leon Dore aesthetic.

Working on the 990 V1, V2 and V3 silhouettes, Santis has given the retro kicks a new lease of life, and the coordinating colourways have all been seriously special. Alongside some super-clean neutral options, Santis and New Balance have also dropped some brighter colourways that wouldn’t look out of place in an ALD lookbook. And, speaking of lookbooks, the initial Made in USA drop also saw an accompanying apparel collection, so if you need to stock up on your basics, there's plenty of those to choose from too.

What have you thought of the collection so far? Any favourite colourways? Let us know your thoughts over on Twitter, and check out the rest of the Made in USA collection over at New Balance.