New Balance Wmns 999
Colorway: Turquoise Green · Style code: WL999AB · Release date: August 15, 2018 · Price: $2832 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: New Balance Wmns 999 Elite (WL999AC) · New Balance Wmns 999 'Ceremonial Pack - Thunder' (WL999CEA) · New Balance Wmns 999 'Drizzle Concrete' (WL999CED) · New Balance Wmns 999 'Tropical Pack - Freshwater Coral Glow' (WL999LWB) · New Balance Wmns 999 'Black' (WL999MMA)
The 99X shoes are the part of New Balance's catalogue that the brand has never let drift. The series opened in 1982 with the 990 and then advanced roughly every two or three years (the 995 in 1986, the 996 at the end of the decade, the 997 at the start of the 1990s, the 998 in 1993) before the 999 completed the original sequence in 1996. Only after that did the line double back and start issuing second versions and odd numbers, the 991 in 2001 and the 992 in 2006.
What held the series together was less any single technology than where and how it was made: these are the shoes New Balance kept building in its own American factories while the rest of the industry moved offshore, and they carried a cult audience for decades on that basis rather than on marketing.
This women's 999 is dated August 2018 and works the panelled upper (mesh through the middle, suede over the toe, the eyestay and the heel) in green.