Industry Insiders Name Their Favourite Sneakers of 2018

Want an excuse to get in contact with your work heroes? Pitch an ‘Industry Insider’ list to a sneaker publication and reach out under the guise of ‘content’. It never fails.

Yes, fine, that’s creepy, but that’s the nature of following people in the age of cascading timelines. We keep tabs on our community’s cognoscenti from afar, admiring projects through push notifications and seven-second blasts.

Those we’ve admired this year have (somewhat) quietly succeeded. Not the household names with direct lines to the sneaker-verse’s puppet masters, these industry insiders have provided value by geeking out on what they love. They’ve channelled decades of design knowledge into uniquely qualified tech reviews, broken big stories, guided the biggest retail and resale platforms, hacked designs, and — perhaps more importantly — given us memes.

But beyond the sponcon and watchful gaze of affiliates, which of 2018’s sneakers were they most psyched about? We hit up a select few to find out.