On March 20, 2025, the dad shoe is dying.
Don’t panic: You’ll still be able to pick up New Balance 990s wherever they’re sold. Nobody’s going to arrest you for lacing up a pair of Nike Air Monarchs. You’re not even going to get in trouble for going new-school and walking out the door in a pair of On runners. But let it be known: the age of the dad shoe is over. In its place comes something new—or, really, something old. A week from today, the granddad shoe ascends.
Maybe I’m blowing things out of proportion a little. That happens sometimes. It’s necessary when writing about the sneaker world, a scene driven by trends that strike like lightning, often leaving a tremor of thunder throughout the industry as they sell out on the SNKRS app. Sneakerheads are here for legend, for hyperbole, for proclamations of what’s hot, what’s cooked, what’s over and what’s so back. And with the release of the New Balance Allerdale, the granddad shoe is going to be so unbelievably back.
New Balance’s newest silhouette is a brown leather low-top orthopedic nightmare—one that you won’t want to wake up from if you’re already on that Tyler, the Creator type beat, walking out the door in pleated Dockers (vintage, of course) and chunky old cardigans daily. If you told me these kicks were a retro of the shoes my Grandpa Dean used to lace up rather than some hot new silhouette, I wouldn’t question it for a second. And yet, the Allerdale—crafted in New Balance’s storied UK factory in Flimby—is a hot new silhouette, one that many style-minded folks are embracing unreservedly.
In a sense, it’s the logical culmination of the dad shoe era. For years now, everyone from Yeezy to Balenciaga has been aping the aesthetic of the shoes that dads were lacing up to mow the lawn in the ’90s. Hell, even Martine Rose reworked a pair of Monarchs a few years ago. Don’t forget: Just a decade ago, 990s—today one of the most dominant silhouettes in sneakers—were totally out of vogue. “Dad shoe” was an insult, not a tab on StockX. Their ascendance in the scene has stemmed from menswear at large exiting its hypebeast era, largely thanks to more pared-down aesthetics like normcore (the sweet spot in which the dad shoe found its home). Sure, there was a sort of ironic slant to it, literally lacing up the chunky and often ugly shoes your dad used to wear, but the irony has long-since passed. New Balance is one of the hottest brands in sneakers, with high-profile collaborators like Joe Freshgoods, Bricks & Wood, and Salehe Bembury regularly putting out Sneaker of the Year contenders under their banner. There’s a sincere appreciation for the aesthetic the brand has long done best, and 990s are now as likely to be seen on a fashion week runway as they are on your weird uncle at your little cousin’s soccer game.
Sneakers, like the fashion world at large, often have one eye on the past. Pair that with an aging generation of customers that’s starting to have to pay much closer attention to things like orthopedic support and you’ve got a trend that caught on like few others in the last decade. It only makes sense that once it ran its course–or at least had nowhere else to go–the only move is to go even further back, a generation past the dad shoe, for inspiration. They’re not the first to do so, either. Brands like Mephisto and Paraboot have been leaning into this style of shoe—hefty soles, pebbled leather, and clinical insoles—for a while now, and in recent years they’ve caught on in a big way in certain menswear circles. A brand with the reach of New Balance catching on means the trend is about to go supernova. Coinciding with the rise of “eccentric grandpa” TikTok fits and the ever-popular hashtag #oldmoneyaesthetic, don’t expect grandpa shoes to go anywhere any time soon. If anything, look for more of the bigger names in the sneaker world to get in on the old-fashioned fun in the months ahead—much in the way several brands have hopped on the sneaker-loafer train after NB paved the way. Brown leather, ugly (compliment) soles, and Dr. Scholl’s is about to become the new wave.
The Allerdale drops on March 20 overseas. A stateside release is sure to follow soon after.
