Nike’s Best New Shoe of 2024 Just Keeps Getting Better

Forget rare collabs and one-off releases. Nike’s best new shoe is a $100 sneaker anyone can buy.

Published November 4, 2024

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Updated November 4, 2024

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I’m calling it now: Nike’s best shoe of 2024 isn’t an Air Force 1 or Air Jordan by way of Travis Scott. It’s not even the exceptionally fast Alphafly 3, which has now claimed both the men’s and women’s world records in the marathon.

It’s a $100 sneaker with a weirdly spelled name: the Nike C1ty.

brown nike shoes — The Nike C1ty sneaker launched in October but just resurfaced in a bunch of urban-inspired colorways.

Familiar, yet fresh

What makes it so special? For starters, the C1ty a brand-new model — not a mere colorway, vintage revival (e.g. LD-1000) or homage (e.g. Pegasus Plus), although it does covertly reference a pair of existing Nike sneakers.

The first, and most obvious, of these is the General Purpose Shoe, a model made in collaboration with Tom Sachs before the artist was ousted for inappropriate behavior. (For the record, Nike and Sachs are reportedly working together again.)

yellow nike shoe — A collab with the artist Tom Sachs, the General Purpose Shoe debuted in 2022.

The two shoes share similar overall geometries, waffle outsoles and microfiber ankle collars. However, the leatherwork of the C1ty takes after the Field General — a model originally from the early 1980s.

sole of nike shoe — The C1ty shoe borrows some features from the General Purpose Shoe, such as the waffle sole, but isn’t a direct homage.

As a result, the C1ty feels instantly familiar but remains unique enough to chart its own course through Nike’s expansive and ever-growing catalog of riffs, reissues and collaborations that play with palettes but rarely introduce anything beyond a new hue.

I don’t mean to minimize the importance of a good colorway, since the C1ty boasts several. The shoe debuted last month with a dark olive upper inspired by tactical surplus clothing before surfacing in some clever colors based off other urban motifs (brownstones, street food vendors, concrete, etc).

green nike shoe — The launch colorway, an olive green, was inspired by surplus Army clothing.

It’s accessible

But perhaps the best thing about the C1ty shoe is its overall accessibility. Nike doesn’t demand you download an app, fend off bots or wait in a digital queue just to give it your business.

What’s more, the brand set the price of the C1ty at a very reasonable $100, making the shoe far more approachable than popular models like the Vomero 5 ($160).

gray nike sneakers — The Vomero 5 is currently one of Nike’s most popular sneakers. It costs $160.

That said, interested parties shouldn’t sit on the C1ty shoe for long, since I don’t appear to be the only fan. Some colors like Brownstone are already selling out on Nike’s official site, however, retailers like Foot Locker still have them in stock.