New Balance 574 'Passport Pack'
Colorway: Red/Orange · Style code: ML574PPR · Release date: 2018 · Price: $2452 · 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)
Putting red next to orange is harder than it sounds, because the two are neighbours and the eye wants a gap between them. This pair solves it with placement: the tones are held on separate overlay pieces with seams running between them, so what could have gone muddy stays legible instead. The Passport Pack name frames the release around travel, and the palette fits that reading, warm and saturated in the way holiday-brochure colour schemes tend to be.
New Balance sold this pair in 2018 at $90. Themed packs give the brand a way to release several colourways together under one idea, and the 574 takes them easily, since its panel layout already divides the upper into pieces a designer can treat separately. Structurally nothing shifts. The shape came from pairing the 576's upper with the 577's sole, a low-cost way into New Balance's off-road 500 series, and it has absorbed a great many colour treatments since without ever needing a redesign to do it.