New Balance Wmns 574 'Picnic Pack'
Colorway: Red/Blue · Style code: WL574SPW · Release date: June 19, 2021 · Price: $2482 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: New Balance Wmns 574 'Sea Salt Real Pink' (WL5742BA) · New Balance Wmns 574 'Pink Sugar' (WL5742BB) · New Balance Wmns 574 'Reflection Spring Sky' (WL5742BC) · New Balance Wmns 574 Rugged 'Angora Granite' (WL574AA2) · New Balance Wmns 574 'Bright Lavender' (WL574AG2)
Picnic Pack is the group New Balance shipped this women's 574 with, and the colour choice follows the theme: red and blue set against each other across the overlay panels, the combination of a checked tablecloth rather than of a team kit. Each of the toe, saddle and heel pieces takes one of the two, and the material between them stays neutral. It is a summer palette in the plainest sense, bright, primary, and not asking to be read into.
The pair released on June 19, 2021 at $80, at the lower end of the women's line that year. Underneath, nothing departs from the model's standard build, the same wide sole and tall heel counter the 574 has carried since it was assembled as the cheap entry point into New Balance's off-road 500 series. A themed pack is a common way for the brand to move several colourways at once without attaching a collaborator to any of them, and the 574 takes the treatment easily, because its panel layout hands a designer several separate places to put a colour.