Superstar "Five Two 3"

XLARGE has been a fixture of Los Angeles streetwear since 1991, the ape-logo label that helped write the template for the entire category. By 2009 it had a standing relationship with adidas Originals, and the Five-Two 3 Superstar came out of that partnership for the fall season. The Superstar is a blank canvas by design, and XLARGE filled it. The upper alternates panels of lime green, purple, pink and blue snakeskin-textured leather, broken up by black suede Three Stripes, with white XLARGE lettering running along the side.

A matching suede tongue and heel tab carry both logos, the white rubber shell toe keeps the silhouette unmistakable, and the package shipped with six sets of colored laces printed with the line Getting no respect since ’91, a nod to the brand’s own founding year. It is maximal in a way that dates it precisely to its moment, the late-2000s stretch when collaborators treated the Superstar as an excuse to pile on color and texture. That excess is the appeal now. The shoe is a time capsule of a specific streetwear sensibility, loud, confident and unbothered, from a label that earned the right to be. For the archive it sits alongside the long line of Superstar collaborations as evidence of how completely the shell toe absorbed whatever a brand wanted to project onto it.