Avoiding the NPC shoes

A healthy disclaimer

I wanted to write about "NPC shoes", styling and other aspects that relate to fashion, and whenever I write about these topics, I feel the need to add a few disclaimers. First, there is nothing wrong with not caring, or not wanting to care about such things. I am not blind to things like executive dysfunction, it is not a reason for shame if you don't want, or cannot put time and work into something like this.

I have, in the past, been a little too passionate about this, and disregarded such things, I now do my best to not repeat my mistakes. Maybe you go to work 5 or 6 days a week and honestly can't be bothered to think and choose an outfit everyday, you want the least amount of friction possible on your wardrobe, or you get home after 2 hours of transit and you just don't have the energy to take care of sneakers. That is fine, all of this should not be a metric to judge others, only yourselves, and only if we want to.

Alas, of course, fashion is a highly subjective thing, you can disagree with me for whatever reason, and everything I say should be treated as my opinion, the fun thing about fashion is to develop your own personal sense and opinions on these things, so you are encouraged to think about this critically and see if it makes sense to you.

Definitions

Now, we start by defining what NPC shoes are, if you play video games that have NPCs (sorry if you only play Tetris), this is intuitive. An NPC shoe is a shoe that a NPC would use, a non-playable character, a background one. If you ever played gachas like Genshin Impact, you can immediately tell which characters are playable and which ones are not, and this is the point here. Shoes that blend in, that everyone is using, and that are, essentially, not very cool.

Now, this is actually more complex than it looks, I talked back on a past blogpost of mine¹ how the same sneakers can be sneakers and not at the same time, depending on how it is used. And this is a big card when it comes to avoiding what would be best described as "npc shoe effect", but we will get to that eventually. Hopefully this vague idea of what NPC shoes are is intuitive enough.

Part 1: The sneakers themselves

I expect that this is obvious, but if you just don't buy the sneakers everyone is using, you stay clear of this, mostly. Which sneakers is everyone using? Of course this varies greatly, it varies with time, region, and a bunch of other factors. My best advice is to go a mall and just look at what you see. Here I can condense in three big ones: The Nike Dunk Low Panda (not a SB Dunk), the Adidas Samba OG White/Black/Gum, and the greatest of them all: the Converse Chuck Taylor All Star, also known as just the All Star. Depending where you are and when are you reading this, it's a different list, and you need to exercise creativity to substitute them in the rest of this blog post.

So, pretty easy, don't get those, and you likely avoided NPC shoes, congratulations. But, what if you don't want to? Maybe you really like one of those silhouettes, maybe you already have them! Not all hope is lost, but let's tackle it one by one.

If you don't yet own the sneakers, but want them, many of those have variations that will greatly diminish the effect. Instead of a Dunk Low Panda, you can grab a SB Dunk Low in a more creative color and/or material variation. Instead of the Samba OG, a Samba ADV in suede maybe, or one of the many variations Adidas enjoys releasing, I'm partial to the "Día de los Muertos" ones they released last year. The All-Star is probably the trickiest, it has become so ubiquitous that any color variation will be same-y, but you can combine different strategies with a different Converse model, maybe a Chuck 70, still canvas, but with added suede that makes it different, just avoid the basic black and white one, please.

Part 2: Styling

A great divide between the sneakerheads of the Jordan generation: 80s, 90s and 2000s, is that the whole point of the outfit were the sneakers. The outfits were bland and uninspiring, almost on purpose, pairing cheap sweatpants with a highly coveted Nike Dunk SB was a flex. Thankfully we are past that, modern sneaker culture has, in a way, fused with fashion culture. The sneakers are the anchor of an outfit, often the statement piece, but you cannot slack on the rest, you need to think of the whole to truly make it work. This is what I mean with "styling the shoes".

And, in truth, this is the biggest weapon against the NPC shoe effect. If you can make an outfit around the sneakers, even the blandest ones can be a great piece, even if not necessarily the statement one, which isn't a problem, many sneakers work amazingly to elevate and compose, rather than be the focus. Unfortunately styling is also the hardest one to give advice, everyone has their own personal style, and where you live, temperature, the place you are going to, this all matters and changes the outfit you will plan. It is a skill that can be built with time and some general advice. Currently, baggy and wide outfits are peak streetwear, in a world where silhouette and shape are queens, you will be amazed how this simple thing makes a normal outfit stand out, and it goes amazingly with sneakers.

You probably heard such phrases such as "this is great, it goes with every outfit". This is the biggest red flag when it comes to fashion, if you use the same sneakers with every outfit, by definition you are not styling them, and they become passive actors in your wardrobe. Instead, try assembling fits in your mind, and when you consider new sneakers, try to see where they would fit with your wardrobe, not every pair should fit with every pants, this is expected, be prepared to change, to adapt, and to build things on the fly as you grow more confident with your own outfits. Understand where low tops and high tops go, don't hide your sneakers unless it is intentional, think a bit about the colors and consider crew socks in aesthetics that match the shoe.

And this goes even for the sneakers that don't fit the "NPC shoe" definition, buying hyped Air Jordan 11s? If you throw them with slim blue jeans and a t-shirt you are wasting potential, and if I were to judge, it annoys me 10 times more than when people wear boring sneakers.

Part 3: Care

So, you got your cool sneakers, you bought tapered cargo joggers with articulated knees and a shell jacket that compliment the colors, perfect! But you must now take care to not fall into the common pitfall: care. Sneakers, like all outfits, need to be taken care of, you wash your socks, shirts and pants (to the degree it makes sense), you want them clean, yes? By that metric, you should do the same with the sneakers.

There is a big difference between taking care, and worrying with wear. Again, as I said in other blog posts, you should wear the damn sneakers, and wearing them means they will scuff, crease, and all that great stuff, it's part of the look, lean into it. It shows you actually use your stuff and don't leave them on a box like some losers (these ones I can call losers). But please try cleaning them, it is easier to clean them a little many times, than a lot a few times, a baby wipe, a horsehair brush and a bit of time will go a long way into making your sneakers last longer and stay prettier. The exact care depends on the material, of course, you can't treat nubuck and leather the same way, and it is part of the game to research and learn this. Trust me, after some time you will enjoy the act of brushing your suede sneakers, it's oddly comforting.

Another tip is to have a rotation, three pairs of different sneakers that you usually don't wear back to back, this gives time for the materials to "settle", and they will probably last longer than if you had each pair sequentially. Pairing this with the styling tip means you avoid same-y outfits every day, a bonus if you are leaning into the fashion side of things.

Conclusions

I hope to get back to the disclaimer here, it is fine you find this all tiresome, if you want to try one thing first, maybe care or styling, and if you decide that, in the end, you want one simple pair that you wear until they are destroyed, and then buy another, that is your imperative and no one can judge that. If you are like me, however, and have genuine fun and enjoyment of spending time buying and planning outfits, looking at the mirror and thinking it is cool, then I hope I inspired you a bit.

Maybe next time you can pay attention to what everyone uses, how people style (or don't style) their stuff, have inspiration for what you can do, and maybe find a fun and rewarding hobby for yourself. Be that person who doesn't shut up about your interest with your friends, because I have a blast when they let me go on about it.

Footnotes

1. Sneakers and thoughts that keep bouncing off my feet, by myself. ↩