Salomon's Xt-6 Truly Is the New Normal
It's difficult to see the connection between Aritzia, a Canadian mass-market womenswear label, and Salomon, the French sportswear company making techy-cool shoes indicative of the current streetwear zeitgeist. Yet, Aritzia's exclusive Salomon Xt-6 sneakers speaks to where we are in the current state of Salomon.
Aritzia certainly isn't a luxury-leaning Salomon collaborator like MM6 Maison Margiela, which recently offered a take on the X-Alp, an off-beat Salomon trail shoe.
What Aritzia does do well is sell ordinary clothing with vast appeal. And that's exactly what this Salomon collaboration reveals about the outdoor brand's golden child.
As the most popular Salomon silhouette, the Xt-6 has become so normalized that it feels approachable to anyone.
What was once a shoe solely worn by Japanese fashion designers and GORP nerds is now something for everyone: the Xt-6 is now a part of the average fashion consumer's sneaker rotation as much as a pair of classic white-on-white Nike Air Force 1s.
Not that this is a bad thing, mind you. For instance, these Aritzia-exclusive Salomon Xt-6s come in two very chill colorways.
One is an nearly all-white "Lunar Rock" iteration with a hit of grey that isn't personally sending me to the moon but still sold-out on Aritzia's web store in nearly every size. The other is an vanilla-colored sneaker with some hits of hazelnut brown — it's also about to go out of stock.
It's not like a logo is driving these sales. These Xt-6s show almost no signs of co-branding beyond the box it's packaged in.
This suggests that Aritzia shoppers are simply buying these shoes because the Xt-6 is just a stylish, versatile, and digestible shoe.
The receipts show that Salomons's lifestyle business is booming and that's largely due to its ever-popular Xt-6.
So it makes sense why the shoe has dropped in so many different colorways and collaborations and even why it's become the go-to silhouette for the world's biggest retailers seeking to tap a bit of subcultural cool.
These Aritzia Salomon's Xt-6 shoes are akin to the exclusive pair of Xt-6s made for SSENSE's 20th anniversary in 2023. Like Aritizia's Salomon Xt-6, that was a pretty normal collaboration, so much so that you'd likely have thought it was a regular pair of Salomon shoes, but that a retailer as big as SSENSE is procuring its own Salomon Xt-6 is symbolic of the shoe's immense rise.
Surprisingly, despite the added benefit of GORE-TEX lining, SSENSE's Xt-6 didn't sell-out in multiple sizes, like Aritzia's exclusive shoes.
That's likely because SSENSE's customer is already acclimated to the Xt-6, whereas Aritzia's fanbase might just be discovering it for the first time. The exclusive colorways Aritzia offers are also tamer, though, so they're easier to style.
And speaking of retailer exclusives, Nordstrom is getting its own Salomon Xt-6 collaboration in due time. It's a blue, red, and white situation that vaguely reminds me of Japanese Gundam toys and, for a team-up with one of the world's biggest department stores, it's pretty damn good .
No surprise to see that the New York-based creative director Alex Dymond helped cook these bad boys up. Dymond's previously had a hand in creating a fresh new take on Polo Country Ranger boots for Nordstrom and has consulted for brands like Supreme in the past. His involvement demonstrates that the Xt-6 still retains extant clout, even as it's normalized as a legitimate staple sneaker.
Still, the Xt-6 has clocked a lot of mileage. There are plenty of other Salomon styles that haven't yet run up the meter, like the ACS Pro and Speedcross 3.
That means that, should the Xt-6 ever run out of steam, Salomon's got plenty of gas still in its tank.
