The best shoes have a story. Here’s the story of the Salehe Bembury New Balance 2002R “Water Be the Guide”.
In 2015, Bembury, who had begun his career at Payless before moving to Cole Haan, got the biggest break of his career—he would move out to Los Angeles, and design shoes for Kanye West, and his Adidas-partnered brand Yeezy.
It was the opportunity of a lifetime. The problem was, he also traded his life for it.
For five years, Bembury submerged himself in his work, never coming up for air. Once he left, he finally was able to discover the outside world, falling in love with hiking and spending every moment he could in the National Parks of the American Southwest.
It was there that the seeds for his New Balance collab were planted.
He didn’t know it that moment, of course. New Balance approached him in 2020, and he expected it would be the opportunity to do a colourway on a popular model, maybe a 990v3, or a 992. Instead, they came to him with out of the box ideas, and in the process, he fell in love with a sillouhette that had fallen off the radar, something rooted strongly in the shoe culture of the early 2000s, the 2002r.
The 2002r, to Salehe, was a shoe both of its time but also from the heart, a shoe that showed off the newest tech in a bold and passionate way. It inspired him to show off his heart, too, and so he first created the Peace Be The Journey shoe, followed by the latest follow up—the Water Be The Guide.
Both shoes are directly inspired by specific locations that Bembury fell in love with. Peace Be the Journey has the earthy rocky and orange tones taken from Antelope Canyon in Arizona. Water Be The Guide is, in turn, taken from the Havasu Falls, also in Arizona, drawing more from the running water and greenery than the rocky terrain that surrounds it. The box itself is also adorned with a photo of Havasu Falls, accentuating the ode.
Alright, that’s the story behind the shoe. How about the shoe itself?
If you’ve seen them on the feet of Kawhi Leonard during the NBA Playoffs in the last month, you know they hit like no other New Balance, a bold and singular take on the brand’s style that also never feels too loud or out of step with the brand’s ethos.
The colours, bold aqua on hairy suede, with a lighter aqua on leather and plastic beneath it, a hit of bright green on the midsole and framing the iconic N, which itself is in a darker shade of green, as well as the brown splattered on the midsole that comes with a hike through the Arizona wild. It’s all accompanied with a mesh that has the pink accent of the desert sand, and a warm mid-toned brown leather on the tongue.
It’s as comfortable as you could expect from a premium New Balance shoe, made to the manufacturing and quality standards that, at this point, only New Balance is hitting. There’s simply no better made shoes out there at the moment, and New Balance is also one of the few brands that is not experiencing collab burn out in a way that others are. Perhaps that’s due to a difference in philosophy, even hiring Aime Leon Dore’s founder Teddy Santis, one of New Balance’s stand out collaborators, as the brand’s Creative Director earlier this year.
Design can be art, and few out there are creating work that feels as much a part of them as Bembury, who with New Balance has been given the reigns to make a line of shoes that feel more a part of him than anything he’s been able to create before.
It’s a shoe made by one of the most exciting designers in the world, who has been developing a cult following, and seems to be at the heights of his powers right as he is about to ascend to the next level.
To top it off, at the $150.00 price point, with quality near to what New Balance often charges over $200 for, it’s a bargain.
Don’t sleep, and grab this one if you can. One of the best shoes of the year.
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