With input from the Snobette Sneaker Awards panel, we present you with a list of the top ten sneakers for women in 2018. Nike really dominated by building on last year’s momentum with new great new silhouettes and a very purposeful strategy of partnering with high clout creatives and labels including Virgil Abloh, Yoon Ahn, Comme Des Garçons, Undercover and Jerry Lorenzo, among others.
As always, we are very thankful to our panel, who include two of the savviest buyers of women’s sneakers in the world, Susan Boyle of Rime NY boutique and Murata PJs of Sole Finess boutique in Australia, plus New York-based model/fitness expert Kirsy Lovett, Incorp[Her]ated founders Khiana Lowe and Brittany Edwards and writer Maria Mora. Once again, Soleil Barros provided a West Coast perspective.
As always, we made it our focus to pick shoes that resonated with women and made some waves within sneaker culture however. Enjoy our picks below, starting with No. 10 and working back to No. 1.
While Nike’s full bore return this year muted the messages of competing brands, Adidas Originals Falcon still made an impact. Designed for women with a campaign fronted by Kylie Jenner, the shoe touch on the chunky sneaker trend while still making its own unique statement. In any other year, the slick design elements of the Falcon shoe would have it made it a much more celebrated shoe.
New York’s Dominican community is a big part of why the Air Force 1 has remained a staple of Uptown culture. Nike linked with Dominican designer César Pérez, who added just the right amount of flash to a shoe that was a major hit.
While there were a lot of NASA collaborations this year, the marriage of a leather version of a classic shoe with the retired Nasa worm logo was a marriage made in heaven. The American flag Velcro patch on the shoe’s heel added just the right exclamation point.
For her second collaborative shoe with Jordan, stylist Aleali May could have taken the safe route, but instead designed a statement-making shoe that pushed the envelope with a punchy colorful story and a fashionable faux fur tongue. Rare is the women’s silhouette that sells out upon arrival but May’s “Viotech” sneaker did that.
The love for Nike and Sean Wotherspoon’s collaborative shoe is extremely deep. Taken individually the components (Easter pastel color story, corduroy upper, that fact that it’s a hybrid) sound iffy at best, but somehow together they clicked to create a simply magical shoe.
If you were paying attention, the Chanel logo high top among female rappers and Instagram models was 2018’s status sneaker of choice. While the double-C logo is always stunt-worthy, the sporty yet feminine silhouette also delivered and the pops of orange were simply right on time for summer 2018.
Nike and Off-White started off on a good foot simply by starting with a Blazer, a shoe women have always loved. Applying all the lessons he learned from “Then Ten” silhouettes, Abloh went on to create a shoes whose color and material story was worthy of the queen it was honoring. While any properly lit shoe looks good in a photograph, the “QUEEN” is one that’s startling better up close where all its very many nuances come to life.
