Purple Reign

First time I saw these, I couldn’t stop looking at them. Purple doesn’t usually work on sneakers—most designers hedge their bets, throw in black or white like an apology. These just commit to it completely. Full purple.

Skim Milk, an art collective from Los Angeles, collaborated with Fila on a revival of the 1995 silhouette. They named it ’Purple Reign,’ which could go either way, but the shoe doesn’t apologize for anything, so maybe that’s beside the point.

The lookbook that came with it features Michael Q. Schmidt in photographs that feel deliberately unsettling. Not the usual brand-safe polish. There’s an intentional weirdness to it, moments that linger in a way that’s hard to shake.

What’s interesting about bringing in Skim Milk is that it doesn’t feel like a standard retro play. You could just re-release a 1995 shoe and make money. But collaborating with an art collective suggests someone’s actually thinking about what they’re reviving, not just photocopying the past.

Available at Fila stores in New York, Seoul, and Tokyo, plus online. It’s the kind of shoe that stops people on the street. Which, I think, was always the entire point.