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The Reebok InstaPump Fury is an ugly shoe. To anyone with two working eyes, this should be indisputable. And yet, nearly 25 years after it was first released, the shoe has become not only the most popular ugly sneaker in the world, but—even more bafflingly—a favorite amongst the world's coolest designers for collaborations.
The InstaPump Fury was born during Reebok’s trippy, experimental phase—the late '80s into the early '90s. Reebok was aggressively pushing its new, if somewhat goofy, Pump innovations in sometimes ill-advised ways. (Including endorsements: As nasty as Dee Brown's no-look jam in the 1991 dunk contest was, it was never gonna get Reebok Pumps moving like Air Jordans.) The InstaPump Fury was the most WTF of them all: a Frankenstein of various technologies lifted from some of Reebok's most innovative products, sewn and glued together, then jolted into life as a mutated, anti-modernist concept. Even the name, "InstaPump Fury," sounds less like a shoe and more like a SuperSoaker model. It challenged all running shoe—hell, footwear—conventions.
Not that the sneaker was meant to be ugly just for the sake of it. It was originally intended as a performance shoe that would appeal to both serious and recreational runners, but its space-age (for then) laceless look and x-treem red-and-highlighter-yellow color scheme meant it would inevitably appeal to only a very particular customer—one that appreciated its wacky design over whatever benefits the Fury deliver performance-wise.
In the late ‘90s, Reebok realized this shift in who was purchasing the Fury, but luckily they already understood why. Todd Krinsky, Global VP of Reebok Classic and Entertainment—the man who helped sign the likes of Allen Iverson, 50 Cent, and Jay Z to Reebok back in the day, while most recently working with Kendrick Lamar and Future—knew the arresting and iconic look of the shoe wouldn’t go mainstream out the gate. But he knew it would stand apart in a way that aficionados and trend-spotters would to take notice and latch on. “I think because it was so iconic and represented such an interesting time of innovation, it became timeless.” Krinsky explains. “Interesting enough, it really was adopted by Japanese fashion. Not just Tokyo, but all over Japan, it was like this cult shoe. It also became big all over Asia.” The Reebok InstaPump Fury had found a host body to stay alive. And begin a movement.
That low-key, subconscious grassroots campaign for the Fury kept the shoe alive over a decade of sneaker evolution. Trend-spotters saw the inner beauty of the Fury, which allowed the shoe to see annual releases in new colors for collectors to scoop up and cherish. It wasn’t doing Jordan numbers, but its seminal success was done with no real marketing dollars allocated to push the model to broader audiences. “It was never something for us where we had a big campaign. So it was kind of adopted by those kind of people and it got bigger and bigger,” says Krinsky. “I think that because there’s been nothing really like it in the industry—it’s timeless without us really pushing it a lot.”
By the mid-'00s, almost no one was buying the shoe for their morning jog, but the InstaPump Fury continued to see cult success within style-centric circles with versions like the “Jackie Chan” (based off an early ‘90s photo of actor Jackie Chan wearing a pair of neon green Pump Furys.) Because the Fury saw so much success in Asia, fashion designers seeking inspiration for “the next big thing” in that region took notice of just how relevant the Fury had become. Krinsky and his team took notice, too.
“At that point, a lot of fashion designers either knew about and began to like the cool look of it—or saw it when they were traveling through places like Tokyo and were like, ‘yo, this is a really cool look. We don’t see it all over Europe yet. Don’t see it in the U.S.’ And that’s when fashion brands started asking to work with us,” he says. And that's how the InstaPump Fury showed up in a collab with Chanel in 2003. (Naturally, the storied label was ahead of the fashion curve, even with ugly sneakers.)
Deon Point, Concepts' owner and general manager, admits he was never truly a fan of the shoe growing up, but he knew it was undeniable the potential it had from a sneaker-to-fashion crossover perspective. “For the most part there are a handful of shoes that have inspired fashion related footwear. Often times people just don't take the time to do their homework," he says. "Given the narrow width combined with the slip on appeal of this model it makes sense to work in this channel. It is one of those unisex models that speaks to both sides.”
Over the past three years, the InstaPump Fury has exploded as a canvas for anyone in the shoe game: Concepts, Bape, Sandro, Boris Bidjan Saberi, End Clothing, and, most recently, Vetements are just *some of the brands that have cooked up their own version of Reebok's oddball sneaker. (And you know you've made it into collaboration Hall of Fame when Hender Scheme drops an unlicensed, all-leather, $1,000 version.) Credit the InstaPump Fury's built-from-parts looks, with all those nooks and crannies that make it a great playground for designers. Look at what Vetements did with its scribble version—a creative, brand-advancing approach that Krinsky and his team acknowledge, appreciate and welcome with future collaborations on the model.
In 2017, the Instapump Fury represents the antidote to tired hyper-minimalism trend in menswear. We're trending away from a Dieter Rams-approved, Swedish-everything wardrobe in every category: witness all the Gucci embroidery, the graphic T-shirt explosion, oversized suits, and brighter, more batshit colors everywhere you look. More isn't just more, more is better. Even in hip, hop, the InstaPump Fury has become an easy way to kick tradition. At least if you’re a major trendsetter like Future. “He’s obviously one of the most fashionable–I believe he was on the cover of GQ as one of the most fashionable music icons–came in and [the InstaPump Fury] was one of the shoes that he instantly gravitated towards it, which is interesting because it was never a big shoe with the hip-hop set,” says Krinsky.
Eyes are still adjusting after years of straight-lined Scandinavian menswear and footwear. So, even though the Reebok InstaPump Fury is a proverbial gumbo of shoe parts, that seems to have become its main attraction. And not just to designers who want a showpiece—to wear this sneaker, and to make it look cool, is to reach the mountaintop of style. Raf Simons’ Adidas Ozweego sneakers, Lanvin’s over-colorful hiking lace-adorned running styles, and the InstaPump Fury lead the charge on next-wave sneakerdom, but what makes the Reebok special is that somehow it's a 25-year-old certified cult classic design that's always fresh. It’s the platonic ideal of a true sneakerhead’s sneaker. Even if the damn thing really is capital-U Ugly.
