Balenciaga shoe Calls, sneaker bots, and making friends with salesclerks: The Critical Shopper pursues the Balenciaga TripleS.

This column is normally structured in a prescribed way. It follows a set of rules: Visit the store, look at its offerings, and then give impressions. This isn’t how I shop, or most people. It’s a multi-faceted, longitudinal process. It can happen on the couch, on the phone, or in a shop. It’s about finding the right thing every time, as well asl the chance of being discovered.

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Shopping is often about failing

It is all about failing. Shopping is often about failing. I spend most of my time shopping unsuccessfully. This includes styles that don’t work, garments that don’t fit well, and wild goose chases.

I have been unsuccessful in my quest for one item, the Balenciaga Triple S sneakers in beige, green, and yellow colors, since last fall.

All those disappointments were a great case study of how we shop today. The collapse of the luxury market and streetwear-inspired drops, and the ways that the perfect-information promise made by internet commerce is a scam. How the hype cycle has become an unnavigable series of spikes and a long arc.

Not only a shoe but also an idea

The Triple S was revealed at Balenciaga’s fall 2017 runway show in January 2017. It looked utterly absurd. This is the kind of stylistic shock that makes people laugh and inspires copycats.

The silhouette is now accepted, scrutinized, and absorbed well over a year later. The style and one colorway attracted me to it. It reminded me of the early 1990s Nike tennis shoes.

They were commercially released in the latter part of last summer. It happened one night in September while driving along the Upper East Side. They were in the Balenciaga shoe store in Madison. They were mine a few weeks later when I returned to Balenciaga.

They were as heavy and beautiful as a Lalique vase, but as heavy as a small watermelon. Each shoe was approximately the same volume as my head. The floor pair was my size. I was surprised when they fit me well. They were aerodynamic. I was like a Kpop star.

 Luxury sneakers

In retrospect, it seems strange to imagine walking into a store and asking for my size. Balenciaga shoes Then, you pay, and then you walk out. Luxury sneakers were simpler in the fall of 2017.

I can remember most clearly from that day that the sales clerk was tall. He told me that the shoes were only for show, with a mixture of exuberance, and pity. They were sold out. I tried to leave my number hoping for a call. I never received a call.

It becomes unbearable when I desire something so badly. Good sense is lost when it comes to solving an impossible puzzle. I set up useless Google alerts, called Balenciaga customer support a few times, searched Grailed and eBay, and so forth. No dice.

By December, I was serious. I reached out to every Balenciaga shop in the country. I was met with snickering, helpfulness, and some telling me that they had already “presold” their restock order.

Unspoken-for pairs were available, but they weren’t in the colors I desired. balenciaga shoes One store, located in SoHo, stated that it would restock the stock and just put the items out on the ground.

I stopped by to look around with a friend and struck up a conversation with Maya, a young clerk who offered to help if my favorite colorway was ever back in stock. It almost certainly wouldn’t.

A few weeks later, I received a text asking me if I would be interested in the all-black version. It was a compromise but not terrible. On a rainy, filthy day, I went over to try them on. There were two options, one was more distressed than the other.

The more polished option felt more versatile and I believed it might be the answer to the question that I had been hearing for months.

It didn’t. It didn’t. I purchased a jacket I thought would look great with the sneakers that I was afraid I wouldn’t get. They were the subject of a podcast or two.

Pusha-T was wearing the Dover Street Market limited edition Triple S in my size. I thought about asking him to purchase them when he was done wearing them at a party in January.

Bootlegs and Bots

After a while, I was unable to satisfy my craving and decided to explore the world of bootlegs in search of a fake, either extremely credible or completely non-credible.

Small had what I felt was the new plus super of bootlegs. A shoe in the style and colors the Triple S but with “KANYE YEEZY” stitched where “BALENCIAGA” was supposed to be. Through a proxy service TaobaoAge, I purchased two pairs and a third pair (an imaginative version of the Yeezy350s) for $230. (Tmall is located in China.

The anonymous agents were my contact for six weeks between December and January. I kept in touch with them faithfully over email. They kept me informed about any stock shortages or slight differences in advertised items, and they followed up with order updates. This was the most satisfying and reliable human exchange I had ever experienced on this entire quest.

crushed shoe

Three crushed shoe boxes were placed in a cardboard box with Chinese letters and taped together. They were poorly made, with paint in places it wasn’t supposed to be, and stitching that breaks apart. But they still make me smile every time I look at them. Balenciaga shoes They were my boots at MoMA’s January bootleg party, and nobody noticed.

Balenciaga also announced at the same time that it would shift production of the Triple S to China. Some changes were apparent when the 2.0 versions began to trickle out: The Chinese version is approximately a pound lighter per pair and less distressed than its predecessor. It’s a bit of a bootleg.

While I was still trying to find the Italian originals and sending numerous notes to one Grailed user selling the only pair in my sizes, I finally decided to go all-out to purchase a pair.

I created some columns in Tweetdeck and started keeping an eye on the underground network of bots and monitors who specialize in buying sneakers as soon as they become available online. I was particularly interested in the Twitter accounts @Bkantha1 (now @LINKSZN), as they seemed to have the most minimalist approach. I set up tweet notifications for each account.

A bit later, I started following a man who lived in Hong Kong in his late 20s. He has a surplus of cash, a penchant for using hashtags to vomit, and a growing interest in streetwear. Every tweet about a Triple S stock sale would be retweeted by him. To be notified when he did, I set up an alert.

Frantic orchestra

My phone became a busy, frantic orchestra with notifications constantly ringing at all hours. I was awakened by an alarm several times and instinctively grabbed my phone to check if the screen was showing the right pair. Many times, I clicked through and was disappointed to discover that the pair was sold out.

One morning, while I was writing, I received an alert for Barney’s listing. It listed the black and pink women’s Triple S. I grabbed the largest size available and hoped they would fit. Balenciaga shoes  felt like sausage casings when I tried them on after they arrived. They were so thin that I was afraid they would split if I had to run in them. They were returned to me in my grief.

A week before that, I had placed bids on StockX to purchase both the original and reissue version of my favorite colorway. StockX is a website that acts as a middleman for sneaker resale. The seller ships the shoes to StockX and the company verifies their authenticity before sending them to the buyer.

Excellent service for a snakers

This was an excellent service for a sneaker that is being aggressively bootlegged. And, judging from the photos on Chinese and Russian web shops, it’s at a reasonably high level. It is included in the price of your purchase.

My completely reasonable and not outrageous bid was accepted by someone in March. I was excited but a little wary. They arrived a few days later with a StockX tag hanging from the left shoe. They were gorgeous, but the toe boxes on the left shoe had a slightly raggedy stitch.

They were very similar to the ones I had bought in SoHo. YouTube had many videos that showed how to spot fake Triple S’s. There are tons of Jordans and Yeezys, but I couldn’t find any for these. The only ones I could find were made by bootleggers. (Nice try!)

They sat in my lap for several weeks, somewhat skeptical. They were eventually sold to me.

Success. It’s possible.

The deluge

The deluge arrived in May. A random late-night notification led me to the Saks Fifth Avenue website where I found the exact pair that I was looking for. It never arrived. FedEx tracking page was a cruel taunt.

One day, the day before the alleged delivery, I went down from my apartment to meet a FedEx truck. It turned out to be a budget rental truck with a lot of boxes and two very harried workers trying their best to sort them. This was all around 9 p.m.

I assumed the package had been stolen by some observant handler along the route. After a few weeks of tracking purgatory, it began to move south. It ended up at Bal Harbour Saks, Fla., where the clerk who eventually issued my refund — albeit several weeks late — informed me.

But! But! I filled out paperwork to have them held for me in a hotel across the country. I returned home a few days later and bought them for $895. It was Maya’s final day.

It was not a prize, there wasn’t any celebration for completing this difficult task. I suddenly had the shoes and was longing for them. It had been months. My desire to acquire was replaced by an aesthetic need.

Dior Homme B22 and the Versace Chain

They were sought after, memed, played out and then forgotten. A new generation of bulky sneakers emerged, some even more bizarre: the Dior Homme B22 and the Versace Chain Reaction.

Nine months after I put the first pair of shoes on my feet, and was told they wouldn’t stay, they suddenly appeared everywhere. I was mocked in their ads on Instagram and in the ones that follow me across the internet. We are here! They are easily available! They are easily available!

Last month, however, I was wearing something bright and simple and realized I had the perfect pair of sneakers. The thrill of balancing around the Upper East Side Balenciaga shop while laced up wasn’t quite as thrilling.

The satisfaction came from something else, something like wearing something you have had for so many years that it has become a part of your everyday life.

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