Sneaker Laces

A lace is the one part of a sneaker you touch every day, and the easiest to cheapen. Ours are made by Centro Accessori, a specialist in the Marche footwear district that has supplied Italian shoemakers since 1973. They run the full range — flat and round, cotton and technical — but the ones we use are drawn from their waxed-cotton work: densely woven, lightly waxed for a clean hand and a tip that holds, and finished with proper metal or bonded aglets rather than heat-shrink plastic.

Good laces are quietly structural. They hold the shoe to the foot, they take daily abrasion at the eyelets, and they are the detail that dates a sneaker fastest when they fray or grey. Centro Accessori make theirs to be re-tied thousands of times and still look considered, and can match colour and finish exactly to each upper. A small part, made properly — which is rather the point.