Something shifted when Italy turned its attention to the sneaker. What had long been considered a purely functional object became, in the hands of the peninsula's most accomplished craftsmen, a vehicle for the same obsessive refinement that defines every other corner of Italian dressing. At IsuiT, the sneakers selected from Kiton, Isaia, Santoni and Sartorio are not adaptations of a foreign idea they are an entirely Italian reinvention of it.
The materials tell the story most clearly. Cotton of a quality rarely seen in this category, leather burnished to a depth that rewards close attention, and leather crocodile reserved for those who understand that the most interesting choices are always the least expected ones. A sneaker, yes but one that carries within it the full weight of a culture that has never been able to approach anything carelessly.
