The Short Cut
- The performance running shoe is now a fashion object. Hoka, On, Salomon, and ASICS have crossed from specialist sport into everyday style without being asked to.
- What used to mark you as a runner now marks you as someone with good taste. The brands are building their entire futures around that shift.
- None of this happened at the expense of performance credibility. The carbon plate and the colourway coexist.
- For runners who care about none of this, the market for technical gear has never been better-funded, and that is downstream of the fashion money.
How We Got Here
It started with trail running shoes that looked like nothing anyone had seen before. The Salomon XT-6 was designed for mountain ultra-racing: aggressive, chunky, with a silhouette from a different category entirely. It crossed into street fashion via gorpcore, the aesthetics trend of the mid-2010s that reframed outdoor gear as something interesting rather than merely practical, and by the time it landed in designer boutiques alongside Gore-Tex jackets and Patagonia fleeces, Salomon was doing collaborations with Comme des Garçons and Palace.
Hoka followed a different path but arrived at the same place. Founded in Annecy in 2009 by two former Salomon employees, Hoka built its initial following in ultra-endurance circles. The maximal stack height and distinctive silhouette read as strange in mainstream running, and stranger still outside of it. Then comfort became fashion. Chunky became desirable. Hoka's bold foam geometry, worn by nurses and athletes and people who had never run a race in their lives, became a cultural object. By the early 2020s, Hoka was recording triple-digit growth and attracting collaborations with Marni.
On Running, founded in Switzerland in 2010, was the most deliberately designed of the three challengers. The CloudTec sole system was visually distinct from the first product, and the brand's minimal Swiss aesthetic positioned it against the louder American incumbents. By 2025, On was posting revenue above $2 billion and partnering with Loewe on capsule collections.
What Changed
The broader cultural shift that enabled all of this was athleisure becoming permanent. What began as the blurring of gym wear and casual wear became something deeper: a wholesale reorganisation of what counts as dressed. Running shoes are now worn to restaurants, galleries, offices, and airports without anyone needing to explain why. The question has moved from "is this acceptable?" to "which ones?"
Within that shift, running's social emergence accelerated the process. When running became something people documented and shared rather than did quietly, the gear became visible in a way it never had been before. A runner posting their morning run on Strava or Instagram is also posting their shoes, their vest, their matching set. The kit became content.
This visibility created demand from an entirely new customer. The person who runs five kilometres on a Saturday morning and wants to look like they take it seriously is a different customer from the person chasing a sub-3 hour marathon. But they are a much larger group, and the brands noticed.
The Performance Paradox
The interesting tension is that none of this happened at the expense of performance credibility. Hoka's Mach Remastered is both a speed trainer and a fashion object. On's Cloudboom Echo is a legitimate carbon-plate racing shoe that also appears in editorial fashion shoots. ASICS's sportstyle business, vintage-inspired tracksuits and reissued colourways, grew 52.9% in a single quarter in 2025 while the brand's racing division was also producing some of its most technically advanced racing shoes to date.
The brands that are winning are the ones that have not had to choose between performance and lifestyle. The carbon plate and the colourway coexist. The person who buys Hoka for a marathon and the person who buys Hoka for brunch can be served by the same shoe.
This is a structural departure from the old model. Nike and Adidas built their businesses on the idea that performance credibility trickled down into lifestyle appeal. The new running brands are discovering that the trickle also goes the other way, and that being desirable off the road does not diminish what you are on it.
What It Means for Runners
For runners who care about none of this, the practical upshot is that the market for technical running gear has never been better-funded. Brands chasing fashion credibility are investing heavily in product development, material science, and design, because they need to justify the premium and maintain the credibility that makes lifestyle buyers trust them in the first place.
The super shoes, the advanced foams, the considered design: all of it is downstream of a brand ecosystem where looking good and going fast are no longer presented as separate goals.
The race kit you wear on marathon morning is also, simultaneously, a cultural artefact. You may not think of it that way. The brand that made it does.
Related reading: For the performance side of this story, Super Shoes Are Rewriting the Marathon Record Book covers what carbon-plate technology actually does to marathon times. On Running's Cloudboom Echo appears in both the fashion press and in the finishing corridors of the Berlin Marathon, where it has been worn by multiple sub-elite record attempts. For the cultural shift younger runners are driving alongside this brand evolution, The Young Runner Has Arrived covers the demand side of the same story.
The Extra Mile
For the business and market dynamics, the Business of Fashion's 2026 coverage of Hoka's fashion strategy and the sportsverse analysis of On vs Hoka vs Nike's positioning are the clearest recent treatments. ASICS's quarterly reports show the sportstyle growth numbers. The gorpcore movement and its role in bringing outdoor and trail brands into fashion culture is documented in Highsnobiety's 2022 gorpcore report, which identified Salomon's XT-6 as the first running shoe to transition from performance niche to mainstream fashion object.