CONCEPTS x New Balance 'Night Trail'
Shamefully I admit that I’ve been collecting sneakers since the early nineties, but I’m clearly late to the game when it comes to New Balance. The good news is that this trend changed with the New Balance 600-C Series that blended my interests in design, cycling, and shoes. You can check out a short piece I wrote about the New Balance 600 C-Series that I wrote back in 2016 by visiting this page..
Earlier this year a New Balance did it again by blending my interests in design, shoes, and now with the city of Boston through their collaboration with CONCEPTS. New Balanced is headquartered in the western end of Boston and Concepts is a sneaker haven down the street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Just outside the picturesque Harvard Square. While this latest collaboration isn’t the first time these two have come together, this one definitely sets a new bar.
The CONCEPTS X New Balance Trailbuster ‘Night Trail’ is more than just a collaboration through a limited color pack. They call it a re-engineering. What they’ve done is built out a sleek sleeper of trainer with a classic palette of black, white, and gum rubber. However it's the technical re-thinking that starts with a trail running shoe’s silhouette that gets slimmed down to a lower profile and plenty of high vis details added throughout. The reflective threads of the metallic close-knit mesh may be the most obvious, but flash a light across these Trailbusters in the dark and the entirety of the reflective welded skin (known as Fantomfit) pops. Additional details of the collaboration include CONCEPTS branded insole, laces, hangtag and of course the ever important packaging (although mine came in a nondescript standard New Balance box.)
The CONCEPTS x New Balance Trailbuster ‘Night Trail’ was originally released on 02.03.16 for a suggested retail of $135US. Not surprisingly, it sold out in less than an hour. About a week later it came to Canada via Livestock. But while I slept on the original availability, this shoe never seemed to fall from the front of my brain. Nonetheless though it was still sold out though. Two months later and fortunately for me I happened to check the Livestock site and a last pair was in stock, in my size. Fate. From what I can gather, it seemed to be the last pair anywhere… at all. So I jumped on it.
New Balance is quickly earning a top spot in my collection and I think this new collaboration with CONCEPTS may sit high on my all time list. Click through the gallery below for some product shots of the CONCEPTS X New Balance Trailbuster 'Night Trail'.
