Sneaker wonderland

SNEAKERHEADS are set to make a beeline for ArtScience Museum’s latest exhibition Sneakertopia, which features over 100 limited-edition sneakers alongside 70 artworks inspired by sneaker culture. The incredibly hard-to-find shoes are too many to list here, but they include the Supreme Nike SB Lunar Dunk Hi Friends & Family in all-red (of which there are only 24 in the world), the Louis Vuitton and Nike Air Force 1 by Virgil Abloh (which comes with its own monogrammed orange leather pilot case), and a Nike Air Mag from Steven Spielberg’s movie Back To The Future (now selling in the secondary market for six-figure sums).

Sneakertopia is the brainchild of Emmy-winning producer Steve Harris and Silicon Valley techpreneur Steve Brown, who’ve taken the show to Los Angeles and New York before bringing it to Singapore. Harris reckons the total value of the sneakers on display easily exceeds US$1 million, but places the value of the accompanying artworks even higher at over US$2 million.

He shies away from estimating the total value of the global sneaker industry, in part “because prices in the sneaker resale market fluctuate”, he says. But according to Statista.com, the total global sneakers market revenue came in at approximately US$72.7 billion in 2022, and is forecast to reach a value of over US$100 billion by 2026.