Since Brian Procell first chanced upon Mephisto’s wide-set sneakers at his local suburban New Jersey mall in the 1990s, he has been smitten by the French-made shoes.
“I’ve traversed the globes in Mephistos,” said Mr. Procell, a grand poobah of New York’s vintage scene. The sneakers are light on branding, sophisticated like a leather club chair and, to him, ideal for world travel. “Tokyo, French flea markets, they’ve been everywhere,” he said.
Those are more cosmopolitan settings then the common (though clichéd) environments where Mephistos tend to appear: carpeted condos and retirement homes. The brand’s shoppers have traditionally been more AARP than Gen Z. During a visit last month to Mephisto’s shop in midtown Manhattan, a pool of gray-haired shoppers confirmed the brand’s renown with the 60-and-up set.
Mr. Procell is not nearly that old, but he has heeded the footwear wisdom of his elders. Mephistos are “for the geriatric community, and why is that?” he asked, “Because they’re built well and they’re easy on your feet.”
So smitten is he that last year, Mr. Procell reached out to Mephisto to make his own version of its archetypical Match model. The company bit, and tomorrow a collaborative version of its blocky Match sneaker, in a preppy British shade of racing green, will be released exclusively at the Procell downtown Manhattan boutique. There, the shoe of grandparents everywhere will be on offer, wedged between racks of endangered Chanel, faded tennis tees and blisteringly rare Stone Island slickers.
That is, while stock lasts. The suede-and-leather shoes are rarer than nearly all Jordans. Just 100 pair were produced.
“If you know Brian, you can’t help but get sucked in,” said Rusty Hall, the chief executive of Mephisto USA, of why the company agreed to make a shoe, let alone such a limited shoe. Working with Procell, he said, “gets us out to a market that we typically don’t entertain.”
If Mephisto was game to work with Mr. Procell, it was in part because the company has arrived at a moment when the shoes’ stodgy nature is making them desirable.
“The dad shoe trend became a grandpa shoe trend, and we definitely see the windfall from that effect,” said Logan Bird, 33, the vice president for omnichannel sales at Mephisto USA. The company, based in Tennessee, is a subsidiary of the Mephisto French parent company. (The French mother ship has done its own cool-guy collaborations, most recently with the mid-market French fashion brand Fursac.)
The buzzy artist Chase Hall recently told New York magazine that he owns more than 50 pairs of the Match, and GQ.com has hailed a pair of Mephistos as “The Best Retro Walking Shoes.”
The nonconformist, some may say ironic, embrace of geriatric shoes in recent years has boosted many brands. Vogue co-signs and high-fashion collaborations helped Birkenstock slither out of its aging hippie image to be recontextualized as genuinely chic. New Balance’s grayed-out sneakers have become hypebeast fodder, and brands from Bottega Veneta and down to Asics offer mesh-heavy shoes that at first pass would befit Mr. Rogers more than any rapper.
“It’s ‘Hey, my grandfather wore this shoe, I want to be in it,’” said Mr. Hall, who at 67 is closer to the company’s elder sticklers than its new adopter.
It’s not just that they’re the shoes a grandpa might wear, it’s that Mephistos are very much not shoes that efficiency-obsessed tech-bros would swoon over. They’re not for maximizing your step count or bragging about their lab-test sole. Wearing Mephistos is like using a wooden tennis racket. They get the job done, so why change?
“They’re sporty, but they’re also formal,” said Ytilaer Jay Law, 29, a fashion designer in Florida who owns a pair of cigar brown Match sneakers. He described them as somewhere between Tiger Woods’s golf cleats and a date-night dress shoe. He has worn them with jorts (of his own design) and Louis Vuitton monogrammed socks. Mephistos are, he said, “beautifully designed.”
Oliver Klein, 34, a restaurant manager in Brooklyn, is on his fourth pair of Mephisto’s Match model. “In the era of hyped-up Asics and New Balances, it’s nice to go back to something that just feels sort of understated and classic,” he said. Similar to Mr. Procell, he hailed the sneaker’s “orthopedic adjacency.”
Is Mephisto worried that its mature clientele will flee if their shoes get hyped up? Hardly. “Grandpa probably doesn’t even know that his grandson’s interested in the brand,” Mr. Hall said.
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