Every line has the model that gets overlooked, and for a long time the Penny III was that model for a lot of people. Even inside the building opinions split on it. One of us called it the least favorite Penny of the bunch right up until this version existed. That is the fun of a pack like this. It can change your mind about a shoe you thought you had already filed away.
The III always had the bones, though. The way the Foamposite wing and the collar line flow together is some of the cleaner work in the whole Penny run. The problem was never the design. It was that the colorways had stayed pretty tame, never quite turning the shoe loose. If you loved the III the way some of us did, that was the small heartbreak of owning one. So much potential sitting under safe colors.
This pair fixed that with the easiest call in the world. An all Atlantic Blue upper, the color the Penny line basically owns, set against a contrasting white Foamposite wing. That is it. No tricks. Just letting the model finally be as loud and as confident as its silhouette always wanted to be. Sometimes you don’t need to reinvent a shoe. You just need to give it the colorway it should have had all along.
What’s satisfying is how many people came around on the III because of this version. A skeptic gets one pair that makes the shoe make sense, and suddenly they are defending a model they used to skip. That is the best thing a colorway can do, send people back to appreciate a silhouette they had written off.
The Penny Pack as a whole was a love letter to a player and a series, and the III earned its place in it by proving the doubters wrong. Atlantic Blue and white, and a shoe that finally got to show what it was.Array
Be honest, where did the Penny III rank for you before this pair, and did this one move it up the list?Array
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Photos by Nick DePaula
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