K-Swiss Made CEO Sneakers with the Most Cringe Names

In today’s episode of Things That Shouldn’t Exist, have based a sneaker line on a clique of people who pride themselves on dressing like absolute garbage. Dubbed ‘The Startup’ collection, this trio of leather slugs are made ‘for CEOs’ who have dared to swoop lower than Allbirds.

The theme is cringe, but it gets worse. K-Swiss have named colourways for things their marketing team is lacking, like ‘Ambition’, ‘Risk’, and ‘Vision’. Features play on bigwig burdens, with laces added for ‘security’ (get it?) and side zippers that allow easy access and removal when traversing airports.

The sneakers are the types of Silicon Valley pageantry that Silicon Valley would make fun of. They even feign focus on transparency by showing how much each shoe costs to produce, and play on the Valley’s ‘Direct to Consumer’ ethos by cutting out the middleman and selling only through K-Swiss’ website. Which brings me to the only nice things about these shoes: they cost $69.

We’d say no one would wear these, but these are destined for a land where American Apparel hoodies are haute couture, so we wouldn’t be surprised if they were introduced as Facebook staff uniform. If only they used all our Instagram data to learn from our ‘fit pics instead of serving us ads for something we thought of three seconds ago.