Honestly I've found that the lakai shoes, and also the sole tech shoes I've skated tend to last me longer than big brands, which are the terraces and winos (vulc and cup) respectively. Adidas has been inconsistent, the cupsole puigs are amazing, but when I got some ADV sambas cause I fell for the samba hype they got shredded so fast. Nike's have always been meh in my experience when it comes to durability. NB is the exception and has been really damn good though, durability of the 1010s and 808s has been solid, although I found the 1010s were a bit inconsistent depending on the colorway and what materials, suede etc. they used for that specific colorway. Anyways NB is the only big company where I agree about the quality.
I think the issue is that the only shoes I really like the design off the top of my head from Lakai are the terraces, manchesters (at least the older ones) and telfords. As long as we're talking other core companies, for emerica it's the gamma, the KSL and the wino. In both brands cases everything else just sorta blends together and looks too similar, or doesn't look like something that'd really appeal to current skater sensibilities.
So the issue then is if I want a quality skate shoe with a design I like, when I step into a skateshop, NB presents me with a lot more options that look appealing. Beyond that, while NB is the only big company that I've personally found to be good quality overall, the bigger companies just have more designs that are more broadly appealing to current skater sensibilities, so when people walk into a skateshop, they're gonna gravitate to those brands more often since there's more likely to provide a shoe that's appealing, cool, etc.
Anyways, despite all that, I can't speak for their other shoes but the Lakai Terrace is probably my favorite skate shoe in recent memory. I cannot stress this enough, these shoes specifically fucking rule. Only issue I have is there aren't some hidden lace loops, which I think they used to do fairly often on shoes a long time ago? And they stitching for the panel with the lace loops looks like it'll start to separate for me near the first few lace loops. But this happens with every shoe I skate with paneling like that. Again, great fucking shoe, feels the best to skate in moment to moment for me. I hate ripping laces, but these are one of the few shoes that feel so nice to skate in moment to moment that it overcomes that annoyance for me. Ok rant over, try the terrace if you're curious lol
Topic: Lakai 2024 (Read 2561 times)