New Balance 574 'Ivory White'
Colorway: Ivory/Beige/White · Style code: U574SE2 · Price: $2402 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: 574 (U5747FE) · 574 (U5748DF) · 574 (U5748SB) · New Balance New Balance 57/40 'Lunar New Year - Black Poppy' (U5740CNB) · New Balance 57/40 'Lunar New Year - Eclipse' (U5740CNN)
Three shades of nearly the same colour. Ivory has yellow in it, beige has brown, and white has neither, and stacking them on one leather upper produces a shoe that looks monochrome at a distance and layered up close. Leather is the right material for the job, because a smooth finish separates tones this close by the way it reflects light, where suede would flatten all three into a single cream.
New Balance priced this one at $85. The heel runs ENCAP, soft foam set within a stiff polyurethane wall, a construction the 574 has used since it arrived as the value model inside the brand's off-road 500 series. Near-white versions of this shoe occupy a particular place in the catalogue: they are the hardest to keep clean and the easiest to wear, and on a silhouette with this many panels the absence of contrast is what stops it looking heavy, since the eye takes in one shape rather than a stack of separate pieces.