Collabs give desi sneakers a burst of speed

Homegrown shoe brands are dropping limited editions that draw on Indian pop culture

- Mahalakshmi Prabhakaran

There's a visible chuckle in Utkarsh Gupta's voice as he talks of the long line of customers that snaked through the neighbourhood on 2 August. That Saturday homegrown sneaker brand Comet, of which Gupta is the co-founder, had launched the limited edition Comet X Naru drop at their Indiranagar store in Bengaluru.

"We'd announced that we'd stock 200 pairs (each priced ₹5,899) in-store and over 200 people queued up before opening time," recalls Gupta, 32. They sold out within an hour.

Over a week ago, in Delhi, Gully Labs, another India-born sneaker label, launched a limited edition sneaker capsule for men and women, called Aandhi Kobicha (₹10,485) in collaboration with rapper Raga (aka Ravi Mishra). “This wasn’t just a quick name-tag collab for the sake of things. Instead it was a series of conversations that we had with him to come up with a design that aligned with both our visions,” says Arjun Singh, 33, co-founder of the brand. The resultant design is a sneaker crafted from raw jute featuring subtle nods to Raga’s background such as 92, the pin code of east Delhi embroidered on the back tab, and his lyric “Muh se Nikle Aandhi” printed on the insock. They sold out the first drop.