New Balance's Creative Community Celebrates the 580's 20th Anniversary
The iconic trail runner celebrates its birthday with a slew of resolute and authentic artists.
Happy 20th birthday to New Balance‘s 580 sneaker silhouette.
Derived from the American-made 585, the 580 stepped onto the scene in 1996 as a state-of-the-art trail runner with innovative features that included: a full ground contact sole with a high-quality, lightweight stability technology called “ROLLBAR,” the “C-CAP” cushioning element, and a high-performance absorbing technology, dubbed “ENCAP.” These elements combined delivered, and still do, a smooth and balanced run for both dirt trails and paved roads around the globe.
The New Balance 580 then transcended the trail scene and entered street fashion when brands like mita, Undefeated, Stüssy and more began releasing special collaborative renditions of the performance-based sneaker. It has since developed a large cult following, making it one of the Boston-based brand’s most beloved products.
To celebrate this anniversary, New Balance has partnered with a slew of artists, musicians, designers, chefs and the like within its creative community to highlight their respective body of work and how they got to their current position. Each of them share the same values as the athletic brand, including resoluteness, authenticity and the mantra of “always evolving.” These key pillars have defined New Balance for decades and have long guided the way the brand works and the products they create.
Below, we enter the studios of Jade Harwood, co-founder and creative director of Wool & The Gang, and multidiscipline artist Andrew Millar to get a glimpse of their creative process as they discuss the trail they ran to get to where they are now.
