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Every great shoe brand needs a flagship style, a reliable fan favorite whose appeal holds steady no matter which way the fashion tailwinds blow. Nike has the Dunk. Adidas has the Samba. New Balance has the 990. For Asics, the Japanese sportswear brand founded in 1949, that shoe is the Gel-Kayano 14—and despite a long and winding journey to the top, it’s one of the hottest sneakers on the market.
When it first released in 2008, the Kayano 14's innovative tech and singular comfort garnered high praise from the running community. (It nabbed Runner's World International Editor's Choice that same year.) But the 14 was discontinued once Asics rolled out the Kayano’s younger brother, and fans were left scouring eBay as supply of the style slowly dwindled. So when Asics relaunched the silhouette in 2020, with nostalgia for early-aughts running shoes at an all-time high, it seemed uniquely suited to appeal to new and old fans alike. Internally, though, the company wasn’t sure the 14 was the right choice to propel it back into the fashion conversation. “You could close your eyes and pick anything from the Kayano 10 through 14 and they’re all bangers,” says Billy Fischer, Asics’ Global Collaboration Manager. Which put Asics in an unusual position: With over thirty years of Kayano styles to choose from, the company had amassed a glut of contenders with It Shoe potential.
Enter Kiko Kostadinov, the Bulgarian-born, Britain-based designer behind one of the buzziest labels in menswear. “Originally the model that was selected by Asics [to bring back] was the Kayano 13,” Kostadinov says via email. But the 14, which looked faster and more futuristic, caught the designer’s eye. The shoe’s distinct panels, which streak across its mesh uppers before trailing off around its biomorphic outsoles, were hard to miss, and Asics’s telltale tiger stripe insignia, often rendered in a reflective silver-y material, only added to its off-kilter appeal. If you had never seen the 14, you could easily mistake it for an unreleased silhouette expressly cooked up to stoke a frenzy of online chatter in 2022.
It helps that the design of the 14 hasn’t changed much since the shoe’s debut. Kostadinov and his team “showed how versatile and modern the 14 can look with their material choices and unique color blocking,” Fischer says. “Especially when placed next to the OG classic colorways, they can almost feel like different shoes.” The 14 was always ahead of its time; now its forward-looking silhouette and tech-y flourishes feel just right.
Kostadinov’s relationship with Asics has since evolved from direct collaborator to something closer to a consultant. The two entities dropped the double name convention that defined their early partnerships, though eagle-eyed shoppers can still discern which pairs were influenced by Kostadinov in the product descriptions on Asics’ website. The reconfiguration isn’t meant to obfuscate the designer’s involvement; it’s a way for Kiko and co. to indicate their permanence within the Asics universe. Save for a few discreet details, you might not know that your 14s were a product of Kostadinov’s influence—and that’s kind of the point.
Two years down the line, Kostadinov’s prescience seems prophetic. Even general release versions of the 14 sell out quickly, and the style has become the canvas du jour for some of the industry’s most discerning collaborators. Following link-ups with Angelo Baque and Vivienne Westwood, Asics is set to release Kayano 14s with JJJJound, Ice Studios, and Field Trip Recordings, Zack Bia’s soon-to-be launched record label. (“When this project was in its infancy and we had a meeting to go over which model we would start to tackle on the design side,” Bia says via email, “all of our eyes kept coming back to the Kayano 14.”) The Field Trip Recordings collaboration is limited to 200 pairs and will only be distributed to friends and family of the label. Dropping an ultra-rare pair of running shoes to announce the launch of your record label is an extremely 2022 flex, but it’s also a testament to the 14’s particular type of insider-y appeal.
All of which begs the question: Can Asics keep it up? To hear Kostadinov tell it, the path forward is fairly simple: by remaining committed to the product and pushing innovation in the brand’s performance models, Asics will stay the course. “My and my team's goals are to repackage their core ideas and present them in a new light for new customers,” he says humbly. (For fashion soothsayers curious where the brand goes from here, the Gel-Nimbus 9 has the hallmarks of another hit.) With Kostadinov in the mix, and no shortage of choice collaborators to draw on, you don’t need to be an amateur trend forecaster to hazard an answer.
