Rihanna and Red-Hot Royalty Rock the Year’s Hottest Footwear – Sourcing Journal

Rihanna and royalty lent their luster to some of the hottest shoes so far this year.

Three footwear styles made the cut on The Lyst Index’s ranking of the first-quarter’s hottest products published Wednesday, where the shoe brands rubbed shoulders with usual suspects ranging from Gucci and Prada to Versace and Valentino.

At No. 10, the Maison Margiela MM6 x Salomon High sneakers burst into the popular imagination when pregnant “Run This Town” singer Rihanna strutted around the Super Bowl halftime stage in the Low version of the $415 footwear collab. Immediately after her performance was beamed to 112 million viewers, Boohoo found a 136 percent surge in U.S. Google searches for “red sneakers” while people conducted more than 5,000 queries for “Rihanna shoes” during the Bajan chart-topper’s 13-minute spectacle.

Former Yeezy collaborator Adidas landed at No. 7 on the Index with its long-running Gazelle silhouette returning to the fore. The year’s most-searched sneaker, according to Lyst, has clad the feet of bona fide royals such as Prince Harry as well as pop and model royalty including “Watermelon Sugar” singer Harry Styles, Kate Moss and Helena Christensen.

But the index’s highest-ranking footwear entrant, though a relative newcomer, stomped its way into the hearts and minds of culture-obsessed consumers in a color that matches Rihanna’s sneaker moment. MSCHF’s cartoonish Big Red Boots were Q1’s fourth-hottest product by Lyst’s calculations after they set Twitter ablaze when they dropped around Valentine’s Day. Celebrities from rapper Lil Wayne to NBA star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander were spotted wearing the eye-catching, Astro Boy-inspired offering that quickly sold out.