Slam Jam x Salomon XT-4 'Strata'
Colorway: Black/Magnet/Goji Berry · Style code: L41706100 · Release date: June 22, 2022 · Price: $300 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Salomon XT-Quest '75th Anniversary' (L41706200) · Salomon RX Snug 'Winter Adventures' (L41706400) · Salomon X-Mission 4 'Winter Adventures' (L41706700) · Slam Jam x Salomon XA Pro 3D GORE-TEX 'Black' (L47974300) · Slam Jam x Salomon XT-Quest 'Plum Kitten' (L47419300)
Slam Jam has been operating out of Italy since the late 1980s, and the XT-4 is Salomon's most collaborated-on silhouette. The two met over geology.
The premise was volcanic. Italy has ten active volcanoes and many more dormant, and the shoe was designed to read as rock strata under pressure. A sublimated print runs across the mesh upper in greys and blacks taken from the landscape around Etna in Sicily, with red surfacing where the layers break, standing in for what sits beneath. The campaign film was shot on the mountain itself.
It released in June 2022 through a pop-up staged during Paris Fashion Week, and afterwards at the label's own stores and selected stockists. The technical parts of the XT-4 are untouched, which is the usual arrangement for a Salomon collaboration. What changes is the surface, and here the surface carries an argument about where the shoe is meant to have come from.