Hey fam, i’m back from Paris and brought lots of cool stuff with me. I posted most of it on the Instagram channel already but we can go through some of it here again. Also I posted my first vlog on my private channel (in German) about our trail trip to the Alps two weeks ago HERE. But let’s start with three general observations:
running around PFW is still not peaking and everyone seems to be running. 6am SOAR 15k progress run, 7am Unna, 8am Hoka x Dover Streetmarket, 4pm New Balance “Run the Boroughs” and then Staff & Family at Distance in the evening. A pretty accurate schedule. But what to say? I like it. Run your 10-15k early, have your appointments through the day and the drinks at night.
Indie Running is evolving. The “second” wave of indie running didn’t always have an easy start imho. Many started with cotton & tees, maybe even a bit merch-ish. It was easy to just call ‘em “rip off”, no matter what they were up to. 2 years later, we’re seeing a solid number of brands such as Unna, Hermanos Komouri, Optimistic Runners and many more with way bigger collections, new materials, completely own cuts and very improved performance products. I really like that as they definitely can proof themselves they are the running brands they always wanted to be. I like all of them above and am pretty sure they already managed to step out of the shadows of others and leave their own marks. I like that as well.
I missed out on Faith’ Breaking4 attempt because i didn’t make it out of the city so early in the afternoon unfortunately. I heard pretty much great stuff from the event and would’ve loved to be able to join. Looked really cool. Not sure if it’s a coincidence to do an event like this during fashion week. Because they invited so many running stores and many running media people were in Paris already, it made total sense to me. All in all i think Nike did track & field definitely a favor with a media spectacle like this!
leaking is a big thing. In my “sneaker media era”, leaking was hated by the brands and probably ended in a phone call, asking to take down the pics please to continue the good partnership. Nowadays it seems most brands really wanna tease their upcoming stuff as early as possible - exceptions exist obviously. Let’s see where that leads.
stop stealing my pics. Or at least drop me a 1-liner. Re-posting stuff is in the DNA of Runners Highest, but more than once pics were just taken, put in a carousel post with a different filter and no credit given. Why not support each other if you already profit and don’t have any work to do!?
1. Race News & Caleb Olsen in ACG again:
Western States, Lavaredo, Marathon du Mt Blanc and Stubai on the same weekend? That’s quite busy. Francesco Puppi won the 50k at Lavaredo and stays undefeated in 2025. Caleb Olsen not only won WSER, but also “the style game” (WSER is obviously way more valuable but in the end people also talk about his f*ck*** shirt) with a new Nike prototype mesh longsleeve made for cooling. Check Cole’s last post for more info on that. What i find interesting is that Nike ACG seems to be part of Nike’s trail race set-up recently - just remember Caleb’s ACG trail shoes when he won Transgrancanaria in February!
2. MAAP x HOKA Tecton X2
I probably told you 32 times by now that the Tecton X2 is probably the completest trailrunning race shoe i have witnessed so far. To be fair, who am i? Still, it’s an amazing shoe and now Hoka teamed up on a collab with Maap. The cycling brand? Yes. Why? I don’t know, but i guess, to tap into gravel, to open the door to that field and to experiment with one of the “leaders”. I wasn’t sold on this collab until i saw the first content yesterday as it’s very promising. Release mid of july!
3. Paris Fashion Week SS26 Round Up
I already talked so much about last week’s visit at PFW that i want to keep it a bit shorter here. Satisfy was a good start for me. They have a new showroom and presented not only the first batch of theRocker, but 2 all new colorways (other people did leak, so check out the internet if needed) as well. As always, hospitality is great at Satisfy, haha. Apparel-wise, the BIG thing is the women’s collection that’ll be available soon, equipped with everything you’ll demand from Satisfy. Print tees are plenty, themed around American desert stories - nothing completely new but “in brand” i’d say and people will definitely like ‘em. Then there’s some new tree camo that i really like, some new caps (with a weird fit for me, ngl) and even some new materials - my favorite news is that Auralite gets an update. Space-Lace is a new material that’ll get conservative runners all raging’ and one of my personal highlights is the laser-cut short-sleeve running shirt. Good stuff!
On Running was going bigger again this time, with a whole showroom building and several installations. In 4? rooms they didn’t only display collabs like the upcoming PAF (which could be the strongest so far), Loewe and Skyhigh Farm, but also some more performance-oriented stuff and inline footwear. I like the low-cut Lite Spray but unfortunately i cannot show you the pic right now. Same goes for the shoes with Erewhon printed on the outsole. They had a 7am run every day btw, followed by a breakfast in the built-in canteen. Not sure what they did with the yoga room, i have to say.
I wrote something about indie brands such as Hermanos Koumori, Unna and Optimistic Runners above, but i promise, they have good stuff incoming. 2 new footwear collabs included. O.O // I really love how their “character” comes into play more and more and several (relatively) new brands have their own distinctive look now. Keep on doing, fam! Autumn will be great already! I went to Houdini and Norda afterwards - they shared a showroom. Houdini is getting more and more into trails and has some serious stuff coming (but also already available). Norda’s SS26 was strictly “no pics please” what is totally fine, regarding their small curated collection. All 00x come in some strong new colors, but my favorite will be some improvement on the 001 that is called 001A (stay tuned). Also i got some of their 008 slides and they are just heaven for my feet after a week of Paris. SOAR was pretty cool as well. They have some outstanding performative stuff in the pipeline, including several strong and superlight trail pieces. A short tight with an in-built mounting for poles, gels and everything included. AND: they’re doing crazy-weird all-over prints now on their superlight running tees. Took some pics of it. Looks pretty cool! Unfortunately I didn’t make it to District Vision, Portal, ROA and some others but well, the internet is full of it already so you just have to do some research.
Hoka invited me to Paris, so THANK YOU first. I wasn’t allowed to take too many pictures, so i can only show the upcoming Speedgoat 2 in black’n white. I’m honest: Speedgoat 2 will be THE silhouette for the next 1,5 years and it’s got serious Air Max 1 potential. Yeah, said that. Hoka’s definitely heavily working on their lifestyle line-up and will not only release a strong inline collection but some veeeery spicy collabs over the next 1,5 years. Maap is a good start but the list is long and imho it gets more interesting over the year!
Last but not least i went a little shopping at Distance - Rematch.Club was guest over the weekend and brought 100+ vintage marathon tees from all over the world. FFS so many gems in one place and priced quite fairly. Got myself the ‘99 NYC Marathon tee, which was one of the first ones i posted on Runners Highest some years ago. Little bit of a full circle moment!
4. UYN Apparel snippets
Didn’t have them on my screen so far but the last two posts with teasers for SS26 definitely look interesting. Yeah, I can see a bit of Gnuhr in some of the pieces, but overall it looks definitely promising. Also: they claim to use natural materials, that’s PRO for me.
5. Merrell ProMorph
So all-terrain running is a thing now. Well, why shouldn't it be? We don’t have to think in boxes too much: in the end all-terrain means brands build shoes that are meant to be used for most surfaces. Would I run crazy technical trails with the ProMorph? Probably not. Would it be run streets to Parc to woods in them? Most definitely. They’re a big surprise for me as I usually don’t feel “hybrid” silhouettes. Always something off. Not with this one. Good grip, good cushion, still not too cushioned, good fit and very comfortable experience overall.
Wait til someone steals a full 1500 wd article and puts their name on it 🫠
Awesome selection of stuff. I can see myself hanging out on the beach in Caleb Olsen‘s style, for sure! :)