Sneakers on the Red Carpet: VMAs 2022
It's not that wearing sneakers on the red carpet is a no-no per se. They can offer the celebrity a playful high-low dynamic; they can be a comfortable stylistic base for a celebrity taking a fashion risk; they can provide smart contrast or a hit of nostalgia or just save your feet from the blisters that an un-broken-in pair of heels or boots will give you. I'm not knocking it, generally, with this running series. But man do a bunch of y'all look like dork-ass fools trying to pull it off.
The MTV Video Music Awards...gosh I'm old now. Looking over Vogue's coverage of the red carpet and I don't know who half these people are. But I'm not out of touch with actual sneaker culture; far from it. So join me as I get these roasts off.
Offset looks like he put this whole fit together just to humblebrag about his Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1's. This green & white colorblocked pair runs like minimum $12,000 on the secondary market. Southeby's auctioned off a pair for $19,000! What a flex to wear these anywhere! The all-white suiting (also by LV) certainly draws your eye down to the green by virtue of looking like a maître d'hôtel. Not the suddenly-fashionably roomy trousers so much as them paired with the cropped jacket with peacoat-like slanted pockets, worn with lapels and collar turned up. Overall this is fine, if expensively boring.
Joel Madden is a fully 43-year old man walking the red carpet in a branded ballcap, a leather shirt jacket, and some navy Dickies. He's dressed like a youth pastor. I know this is merely the VMAs but have some dignity, my guy. You are not allowed to wear that hat. It is your own brand that you co-own with your brother. Gauche! You have paired this normal streetstyle outfit with a pair of Air Force 1's that feature a premium navy nubuck upper with a classic all-white midsole/outsole. The sneaker itself is fine. On a red carpet though? The white sole stamps out any sense of formality that wasn't already killed by the hat.
Street style looks continue with Glorilla wearing a denim two-piece logomania number by Gucci. It's a cute club outfit but leaves something to be desired on the red carpet. She has paired this with the trendy Lanvin Curb sneaker, which costs $970.00 and looks like someone hurled a pair of Osiris D3 skate shoes from the 90's into a Michael's Crafts store & it got tangled up in the ribbon isle. The laces situation on these looks like a a family of birds built a nest out of some loose, abandoned seatbelts.
Recipients of the Global Icon Award, the Red Hot Chili Peppers somehow still make being goofy work for them. We tolerate it. We think "good for you." Anthony & Chad are wearing atrocious patterned suits; Anthony's is blue and baggy, and he's paired it with basic Asics running shoes (not even a lifestyle silhouette, just plain ol' running shoes), while Chad's black & grey suit has been paired with Jordan 1 mids (mids! How corny!). Flea, however, actually looks like he knows what he's doing. His grey plaid shorts suit fits nicely, & with his neon-magenta buzzcut the ensemble plays a bit like a punk rock Angus Young. Tall green socks flow into perhaps the night's smartest sneaker choice: a pair of New Balance 2002R in mule form, designed in collaboration with LA-based artist Bryant Giles.
Ok now LL Cool J has earned the right to wear this on the red carpet. When you're a dignified elder statesman of popular music and a lowkey living legend, you can wear a leather bomber jacket with matching leather pants. You can wear your "formal" pair of Jordan 1s, in black patent leather with metallic gold swoosh. Someone 30 years younger could wear this exact same outfit and come across as a tryhard goofball. Not Cool James.
I don't know who Kevan Kenney is but this is one punchable fellow. 2003-ass haircut, and a suit that looks like H&M sponsored the St. Vincent "Daddy's Home" album tour. Not technically a sneaker, but Dr. Martens oxford-style shoes are close enough, and this pair uhhhh looks like dude walked through a gravel pit on the way to the award show. Whole outfit looks like Fred Flinstone got a surprise visit from the Fab 5 at his job at the chalk quarry. Wait, oh, is that a diamond-encrusted Apple Watch? Fuck you.
Fit goes a long way toward making tailoring work, and Love Island contestant Johnny Middlebrooks has been blessed with a stylist that understands fit. His double-breasted black Prada suit hugs his abs like a girdle while being cut to allow breathing room for some sick gains in his upper chest and shoulders. Silver chain worn nearly choker-high on the neck is a nice touch, and it compliments his $1,200 Prada Cloudburst Thunder sneakers in all-silver. Now, I don't care for this shoe. It takes an outsole that Prada popularized with its Monolith line of leather boots and slaps it onto a sneaker upper that looks like Sketchers tried to draw a pair of Puma Discs from memory using only a mechanical pencil. But my feelings on the silhouette aside, Johnny has succeeded here where so many other men failed last night, and his choice of a bold, chunky sneaker over a slim black boot or loafer is exactly what elevates everything.
Dazy...if that even is your real name, wearing idk looks like a Theory suit or something. More like LAZY (got 'em!). How thin is that gold chain? Oh my oh my, those are just a plain white pair of Balenciaga Triple S sneakers. Dazy's whole vibe is like if the last year of the Obama administration was embodied in a single human and that human was a nepotism hire at a UPenn-funded tech thinktank. This is an outfit that says "I WILL forget what I ordered at the coffee shop and the barista is gonna have to shout out my name multiple times before it clicks that oh yeah I ordered something." He looks like he's been pasteurized.
Here's Nev Schulman doing the dorkiest white sneakerhead move available to him by wearing the new General Purpose Shoe by Nike & designer Tom Sachs. The idea behind the shoe is that it's a Nike Killshot that you can get dirty on hikes or something. An anti-sneaker culture sneaker. Red Carpet is not a general purpose occasion however, and catfish boy comes off as a bit of a twat.
DJ Khaled, who knows sneakers very well, rocked the maybe-releasing-to-the-public-maybe-not slime green pair of Off-White Forces, and I think I like this sneaker choice more than anyone else's last night. Taking after the previous two pairs, in powder blue and mustard yellow, that Virgil Abloh (RIP) designed to sell in the gift shop for his "Figures of Speech" exhibition at the Boston ICA and the Chicago MCA (I actually attended this exhibition in Chicago in 2019 and passed on the chance to cop the blue pair. Considering that it goes for upwards of $1,600 on the secondary market now, that's what we call a missed opportunity, folks), this green pair was originally only seen on the feet of attendants working the exhibition during its run at the Brooklyn Museum. These loud, Ecto Cooler looking Forces command all of the eye in Khaled's fit, which otherwise is a tastefully cut Prada shirtsuit in grey silk.
Dupre "DoItAll" Kelly, Newark rap legend turned Newark elected official, laced up the Jordan 1 high "Heritage" colorway that dropped earlier this year to a ho-hum response & a below-retail asking price on the secondary market. This base-white Jordan 1 with black laces and red swoosh, toebox, & heel paneling is complimented(?) by the rest of his outfit, which looks like he obtained it in its entirety at an Against All Odds store: black tee, black track pants, a black & red leather letterman-style jacket with metal spikes studded down the sleeves & bracketing the front zipper, and red ballcap that reads NEWARK. Get the novelty baseball caps off of the red carpet, please. Everyone who tries this looks like a benjamin button.
Finally, we have Snoop Dogg, wearing an ugly camo pair of idek. Obviously they look like Converse Chuck Taylors, but I think they might be manufactured by another brand. A Bathing Ape, maybe? Oh no what if these are BORED APE Bapes? NFT shoes? Regardless, he has paired this Payless-looking-ass pair of canvas hightops with an olive leather tracksuit(?). The pants look like leather track pants, but instead of a track jacket he's wearing like a relaxed leather tunic with weird details on the sleeves (gold zippers at the wrists; what appears to be woven patches at the upper arms that look a bit like carbon fiber plates). It's a weird look. It's just the VMAs, so I'm not hating really. I just wish he didn't look like if Link from Legend of Zelda were styled by Buzz Bissinger.