The Neon Future We Were Promised
Kid-me was completely certain that by now everyone would be walking around in glowing, color-shifting clothes. It felt inevitable—the future was supposed to look like a nightclub, like a Tron sequel, like every piece of late-80s concept art ever rendered. Instead we got athleisure and muted earth tones and a collective obsession with looking tasteful.
No New Folk Studio’s Orphe project felt like a small act of revenge against all that beige. Designed by Yuya Kikukawa and his crew in Tokyo, the Orphe was a smart sneaker—white or black, clean silhouette—embedded with LEDs that responded to movement, letting dancers paint light directly into the air with their feet. The campaign footage showed breakdancers using them as brushes, which was genuinely beautiful and also made me immediately aware that I cannot breakdance.
The world is still not as neon as it should be. But at least someone in Tokyo was trying. The Orphe was crowdfunded, which gives it that specific energy of a thing that barely exists—enough people believing in it to push it into being. That’s its own kind of glow.