Sneakers are made to pound the pavement and kick about in. Unless, they are couture. Here are five luxury ateliers working specialty textiles and textures - such as skins, crystals, sequins, satins and lace - into urban shoes this season. 1. Dior Dior's heavily embellished sneakers sparklingly illustrate the notion of sneaker couture. The French maison’s impeccable craftsmanship meets the urban world of the house's creative director Raf Simons for its ‘Fusion’ collection. Simons offers hand-embroidered flowers as a tribute to Christian Dior's fascination with all things floral. Unlike many designers channeling lacing this Spring, Simons abandoned the idea of tying things up, favoring an easy slip-on model that resembles the lace-less aqua model from Speedo. Technical synthetic fabric adds to the bend and movement of the sneaker; the most luxurious made from soft lamb skin with leather floral applique in matching colour hue. 2. Chanel
Style rival Karl Lagerfeld kicked off sneaker couture last Fall with translucent pink, orange, red, black and beige quilted tweed designs for couture maison. For Spring 2015, Lagerfeld went a little more subtle on the hues and with more wearable cool urban versions in navy, red and white or black and grey. Chanel recruited the help of Parisian shoemaker Massaro to design and manufacture the shoes to base out the gowns – incorporating metallic look leather, wool and tweed into panels. 3. HoganItalian luxury shoe and bag maker label Hogan isn’t a couture house as such, but has been in recent collaborations with Karl Lagerfeld and Katie Grand – keeping it on the lips of buyers and editors. Creating iconic sneakers since 1986, Hogan adopts retro sports silhouettes as the shoe frame. From here, an array of colors take place – from sky blue to black, to saccharine pink – and all made from luxury leather such as calf. Its H222 is the most couture luxe. Sneakers come stamped in python print and matte-finish with sequin details as side-panels or ‘H’ for Hogan embellishment in silver. A final couture statement is the alligator skin high-top with tattoo-look ocean embellishment and Converse silhouette. 4. Julien FourniéFrench designer Julien Fournié has created a series of hybrid shoes for his new footwear range, with a particular sneaker standing out for its monochromatic black and candy-colored ribbing, paired with robotic design. Using computer generated design, the couture sneaker is big on architecture - angles, ribbing, tube and panels stitching together in matte-finish leather. The shoe is digitally designed in conjunction with Fashion Labs, joining a pair of leather sandals with heels and derby shoes. The 3-D technology was used pre-couture show in Spring and will be used again to reproduce the shoe commercially mid-2015. Design fans of Tron, take heed. 5. Shourouk Finally, Parisian jeweler Shourouk offers a reworking of the retro velcro sneaker in 2015. With lush Italian-made fabrics, the shoe blends shiny satin, patent leather and suede to form its shell. Details are everything but not overdone with sequins and Swarovski crystals clusters on the velcro strap to crown this sneaker the queen of couture sports wear.