New Balance 574 'Light Brown Soft Yellow'
Colorway: Light Brown/Soft Yellow · Style code: ML574RB2 · Release date: May 4, 2022 · Price: $263 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: New Balance 574 'Pennant Pack' (ML574) · New Balance 574 'Incense' (ML574AA2) · New Balance 574 'Natural Indigo Maple' (ML574AB2) · New Balance 574 'Rain Cloud Maple' (ML574AC2) · Alpha Industries x New Balance 574 'Sedona Seige Grey' (ML574AI2)
Brown and yellow sound like a difficult pairing and are not, provided both are muted. The light brown here is the deeper of the two and holds the suede overlays; the soft yellow is pale enough to read as a cream with warmth in it, and it fills the panels behind. Neither tone is saturated, so the shoe stays inside a narrow band and the contrast comes from depth rather than from hue.
New Balance released the pair on May 4, 2022 at $85, a spring date that matches the palette. The shape is the standard retro one: a sole wider than the upper, a heel raised well above the forefoot, a rubber bumper turning up over the toe, all of it inherited from a shoe built to run on ground that was not paved. What a pale warm pair like this does is make that inheritance harder to see. In brown and yellow the 574 stops looking like a running shoe at all and starts looking like something closer to a slipper with a rubber sole, which is a fair description of how most people actually use it.