Dreaming Italian, Walking Loud

Italy lives in my head as a permanent retirement fantasy. A small house somewhere on the coast, a pizza place within walking distance, the kind of light that makes a crumbling wall look like a painting. I’d eat pasta every day—the fat, butter-thick kind, not the tourist approximation—and sit on a terrace doing nothing in particular. It is, objectively, one of the better dreams to carry around.

Fila and Naked Copenhagen have decided to put that feeling into a sneaker, or at least that’s what they’re calling it. The Italy Pack comes in two colorways of the V94M Low: Vista Blue and Gray Violet. Both are classic dad-sneaker territory—thick, chunky, the kind of silhouette that reads as deliberately unfashionable until you look at it long enough and realize it’s just self-assured. Vista Blue especially has a washed-out coastal quality, the color of a postcard from somewhere warm. Whether any of this is actually Italian beyond the fact that Fila is an Italian brand is a question I’m happy to leave unanswered.

Loud, cheerful, and not trying to be anything other than what they are—which, for a shoe, is about as much as you can ask.