Andrew Rizzo While the Olympic Games have accounted for most Paris-centric sneaker news in recent months, brands have simultaneously capitalized on all the energy surrounding the French capital through unrelated local activations and releases. In an unconventional yet familiar fusion, New Balance and Parisian café Paperboy are putting on a series of running events from August 2-4, with a collaborative FuelCell SuperComp Elite v4 en route for the occasion.
Pictured above is an image of the shoes posted to Instagram by BEAMS employee @sng1980. Notably, BEAMS and Paperboy have collaborated on two different three-way projects in recent years, one with New Balance and another with Reebok, so it doesn’t come as a surprise that the two brands have maintained a working relationship (although BEAMS doesn’t put its name to this pair).
The design revolves heavily around Paperboy’s hallmark ball cap logo, with a black graphic landing gently over white mesh at the forefoot. The quarter logos, laces, and lining all come in black to match, while an off-white midsole adds a touch of sophistication. Much like how we saw with the New Balance takes the upper from their Light 991 sneaker and set collaboration a couple months back, Paperboy brings partially different tooling to the upper, with round eyelets and smaller New Balance quarter logos replacing the slits and oversized branding prevalent on mainline options.
Run clubs and lifestyle-oriented running events have become extraordinarily Light in recent years, and if there was any doubt, this zlta project proves New Balance is tuned in to the culture surrounding one of its biggest verticals. The official @paperboyparis Instagram account makes mention of an August 4th launch, but price information and specific details surrounding the event haven’t been made public at the time of this writing.
