Being 42 years old (and yes, I know I don’t look it) I really don’t have much time for fashion. Fashion for me is grabbing whichever piece of branded motorcycle merch is nearest to the top of the pile, checking it’s clean and putting it on.
Pretty much every T-shirt I own has a bike brand emblazoned on it, and I’m fairly famous within the industry for wearing a Honda t-shirt on a Ducati launch, and a KTM rucksack on a Yamaha launch. It’s kind of a running joke.
So, these Balenciaga ‘Pantashoes’ I find completely confusing. They are a leather trouser and boot combo with the boots already attached to the trouser - as in permanently fused. If you wear the trousers, you have to wear the boots.
That’s confusing enough, to me anyway, but then you get to the price of things. They are £9,800… Let that sink in folks, £9,800 to look like you bought some non-CE approved bike leathers from one of those bargain bin stores that used to pepper the NEC bike show. You know the ones, if you went along on the last day of the show you could generally get what you wanted about 75 per cent off - and they’d generally fall apart a couple of weeks later…
And the more you look at these, the worse it gets. They have some built-in faux knee sliders, ribbed sections on the ankle and foot, and, weirdly, a two-slider that is located just in front of the heel on the outside of the boot. Now, my name is not Simon Crafer, but I’m pretty sure if you need a slider at that location on your boots, your foot position is really on the wonk - or you’ve already crashed.
They are from Balenciaga’s Spring ’24 collection, which it describes as follows:
‘Capital B, the Balenciaga Spring ’24 Collection, is revealed through a time-lapse video capturing urbanity’s circadian rhythms: passersby flow over the sidewalk, weaving through one another or pausing to observe the scene. From dog walkers to package couriers, these city dwellers both face the sunlit Parisian sky and shelter from its sudden rain.’
Right…
Five things you could buy instead of the Balenciaga Pantashoes
Okay, for £10,000 you can get a hell of a lot of bike in 2024, and should you want to, the awesome little Tuono 660 could be sliding into your pit garage or the comfy, quick and slick-looking Tiger Sport 660 from Triumph. You could land the KTM 390 Adventure and go off for a tour (along with a couple of grand change from your £10k), or the retro BSA Gold Star 650. Our pick though would be the do-it-all MT-09 from Yamaha, which is near as makes no difference exactly the same price as these over-priced shreds of leather and plastic.
Yamaha MT-09 Review (2024)
