Sole Collector x Pony ‘Special Blend’

This whole industry runs on relationships, the friendships that turn into phone calls that turn into shoes, and this Pony is one of the clearest examples of that. It exists because of one good person.

That person is Colin Brickley, who is now over at ASICS and is, by every account, simply an awesome dude. After he started at Pony back in 2007, he would let the team run a few one off pairs of any of the brand’s models from time to time, just because he was generous and liked the people he was working with. That is how a lot of the best small projects happen. Not through a big formal deal, but through a friend with a little room to play and a willingness to share it.

By the fall of 2009 that room turned into the Special Blend. The brief was about as personal as it gets, just what would I actually want to wear. With Portland autumn in mind, the answer was a subtle grey base and a shoe that let the materials carry it instead of color. So rather than a contrast of colors, it became a contrast of materials, which is where the name lands. A premium sonatina leather wraps the perimeter above the midsole and runs along the collar and strap, a rich suede tops the body, and a crisply woven ballistic mesh shows through the quarter. A molded faux carbon panel flows through the whole thing to tie it together. The only loud note is the neon, used on the branding and the toe, because even a subtle shoe needs one place to shout.

The model itself flew almost completely under the radar, the kind of Pony most people never clocked, which is part of what made it fun. When you get a chance to build something just to kick around, with no pressure and no spotlight, you can be more personal with it. There were a couple of bonus pairs done up too, a black, red, and green version for a staff writer, and a black and purple Kings pair for the road.

That is what makes this one quietly special. It is not a hyped silhouette or an event blowout. It is a favor between friends, built around good materials and a personal palette, on a model almost nobody else was thinking about.

Shoes like this are the connective tissue of those years, the small unglamorous collabs that only happened because the right people liked each other and wanted to build something together.

Who is the person in your sneaker life that opened a door for you, just because they could, and what came of it?

Gallery

Photos by Nick DePaula

Part of The Complete Guide to Sole Collector Collaborations