Talking Shop: A History of Sneakersnstuff Collaborations

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: when it comes to retailers, Sneakersnstuff is king of the colab. The store’s road to coronation traces back to 1995 when Swedish sneakerheads Erik Fagerlind and Peter Jansson first met. As Peter tells it, their passions preceded them. ‘The first time we met was at a Reebok Walking Clinic for store clerks. He looked at my shoes and I looked at his kicks and we're like, “You're Peter, right? And you're Erik, right?”’ Before long, the two were trekking to New York in search of sneakers for themselves and others — a hustle that led to Sneakersnstuff (SNS) opening doors in Stockholm in 1998.

Since then, SNS’s output has been relentless. After their Basket Hemp PUMA in 2003, their collaborations have set the bar for storytelling in sneakers, with make-ups that nod to everything from booze to legal disputes to Swedish nationalism. When I first contacted Peter for this article I planned on doing every single colab. But on learning that that list would be 140-odd sneakers long, I changed tact. Instead, here are Sneakersnstuff’s most memorable collaborations ever!