Scarcity is everything in the sneaker game, with the hottest kicks of the year often coming in pretty sparse quantities. Asics is taking that to the next level with their newest collaboration. The brand has teamed with one-of-a-kind vintage hub Bentgablenits (BGN for short) for a collection of Gel-1130s that puts the “limited” in “limited edition.”
For those unfamiliar with BGN, the Toronto label specializes in upcycled collections of customized goods, adorning their pieces with vintage yarn, charms, baubles, and other textiles. They’re a favorite of Drake, who boosted the brand’s profile substantially shortly after their launch in 2019 via Instagram. Every piece is one-of-a-kind, and the collaboration with Asics carries the same one-of-one design ethos.
Inspired (quite directly) by the brand’s deep stock of vintage Cracker Jack and gumball charms, each pair of the Bentgablenits x Asics Gel-1130s is meant to replicate the feeling of digging through cracker jack to find your gift—“A Prize in Every Box,” as the campaign slogan says. The shoe itself is a classic Gel-1130 in two colorways, one in men’s sizing with a metallic black and white upper and the women’s sizing coming with blue and green detailing across a white upper. Both feature a creamy off-white sole, meant to mimic the effects of aging on sneakers.
The real draw is the Bentgablenits touch. Every pair is totally unique, featuring an array of legit antique charms hand-sewn around the ankle cuff of the shoe, dating as far back as the 1930s all the way to the 1970s, as well as other hand-crafted detailing across the sneaker. Naturally, a shoe featuring hand-sewn antique charms can’t come in Nike scales of quantity. The shoe launches this weekend at Dover Street Market Ginza in Japan, where just 80 one-of-a-kind pairs will hit shelves. The general release of the shoe won’t bump this number up too much–in total there are only going to be 200 of the Bentgablenits x Asics sneakers, with that number including 20 super-rare pairs featuring particularly hard-to-find charms. These 20 pairs will also feature a box designed by Edith Di Marco, featuring design echoing a vintage Cracker Jack box.
The Bentgablenits x Asics Gel-1130 launches exclusively on July 20th in Japan, with a wider release to follow.
