Ronnie Fieg Knows He's Him (EXCLUSIVE)

15 years ago, Kith was the industry's most powerful sneaker collaborator. In 2026, Kith is still the industry's most powerful sneaker collaborator. No one does more and no one does better. Not a single Kith peer or rival works with basically every major footwear company — Nike, adidas, Puma, On, Converse, ASICS, New Balance, Timberland, Vans, Birkenstock — to create as many instantly sold-out and impressively singular footwear styles.

And Ronnie Fieg knows it.

I spoke with Fieg at Kith: the Footwear Archive, a sprawling exhibit showcasing "all 1,849 pairs from Ronnie Fieg’s footwear archive," according to the release, coinciding with Kith's 15th anniversary and documented in an Assouline-published (and literally gigantic) tome of the same name.

Sitting amidst nearly 2,000 collaborative shoes — which doesn't even include every piece of Kith- or Ronnie Fieg-designed footwear, by the way — Fieg was feeling good. Not cocky, not boastful. Good. Comfortable.

He knows that no one else has ever done what he's done before. And, almost assuredly, no one ever will again. He knows that he's him.

This conversation was condensed and edited for clarity.

Alright, just because we have to start somewhere: out of this giant collection of shoes from the past 15 years, do any stand out as "most" or "least" Kith?

There are almost 1900 shoes here, you know? Walking through the timeline of my work, there are definitely some earlier pieces that may feel "polarizing" but I wouldn't say I'd remove them from the timeline. Every piece here was a stepping stone or learning curve. There's a lot of evolution, so I can't single out a specific brand or shoe that stands out more than the rest.

As a whole, it really tells a story.

Yeah. And not only of my work. I launched a lot of silhouettes for brands, you know? So, you can see both the progression that we've had as a brand and what brands were offering over the years.

Going through it, there are a lot of throwbacks but I was especially struck by how modern the New Balance section is, especially that first shoe you did, the "Steel Blue" 999.

New Balance stands out as maybe the most timeless brand in the collection, at least as far as athletic footwear.

You ever think about running a shoe back exactly as it was?

No. I'm working on so many great forward-looking projects that I rarely look back unless it's a monumental anniversary like this.

I ask primarily because, looking around, you see a ton of people wearing Kith sneakers in their own way — do you ever think about how pants are gonna interact with the shoes?

Are you kidding? [laughs] 100 percent, man. You see that in the shoes themselves, how they take on different forms every couple years to work better with loose pants, tight pants, whatever's happening then. Some are timeless, though — like, you can wear the 999 with anything.

Honestly, though, I picture the shoes being worn with shorts, because I'm thinking about the full shoe. If I was to think about how they'd look under a pant, that'd change the dynamic entirely. I also think about the original purpose of the shoe, what it was intended to do. So, for athletic shoes, I'm thinking about their most athletic form, right?

What if a brand offers you an athletic-style shoe to work on, but you had another in mind?

It's not about what they offer us, it's more like coming together and defining our point of view. What can move the needle for them and for us. Usually, it'll start as a tactful exercise in thinking about what silhouettes we'd work on, figuring out the silhouette, and then looking at what the brand is already doing so that we can differentiate ourselves from that.

Sounds like a good amount of free reign.

It took a long time to gain the confidence to make bigger asks but there's a lot more trust now. It's always a push and pull.

I imagine that's how you end up with stuff like the three-way adidas Clarks collab.

That was a tough conversation to have, you know? And you can tell from looking at the samples, some of the soles didn't make it to fruition because we had to narrow it down. Most of the time we have to edit to make sure the storytelling is cohesive and focused.

Define storytelling.

Sometimes it's just a void in the market. Sometimes it's totally situational. Like, with the Salomon Toe, it just lent itself to the way the shoe was constructed. Plus, think about how that shoe was originally constructed: we turned the faux suedes and meshes into premium leathers, which made it a heavier shoe but also took it to another place.

It's important for us to be this space that people come to when they want newness.

Sometimes that newness pops off. I still remember how people reacted to the Salmon Toes.

You can't plan for it. You know, the Salmon Toe impacted the industry, not just ASICS. People started gravitating towards these retro-tech runner silhouettes from the '90s and reconsidering what that shoe meant for the category.

It really jumpstarted my career. It gave me credibility, it made people trust my point of view on footwear because it wasn't going along with what people were anticipating at the time. It was a completely different direction.

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