On their song “Playing on My Mind,” The 1975’s firebrand frontman Matty Healy sings, “I won’t get clothes online ’cause I get worried about the fit / But that rule don’t apply concerning my relationships.” Based on his recent footwear choices, however, Healy also seems to have very online taste in sneakers.
This was apparent when Healy and his bandmates hit the stage at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend 2023 music festival, which took place this past weekend in Logan Roy’s hometown of Dundee, Scotland. Healy, who swaggered around the stage clutching a screw-top bottle of red wine and ripping cigarettes, wore a white doctor’s lab coat (with a “Matty” name tag pinned to his lapel) over a white Oxford shirt and black tie, cropped gray Thom Browne suit trousers, white tube socks, and a pair of new-looking, silvery-black Asics Gel-Kayano 14s. (Later on, he swapped out the lab coat for the accompanying jacket of his shrunken TB suit.) Minus the sneakers, it was an iteration of what he commonly wears on stage—the effect was a bit dorky, but in a fun, greasy sort of way.
Kayano 14s are, undoubtedly, a cushy and comfortable footwear option fit for the fatiguing task of performing a dynamic stage set. But the reason why Healy, who is a bit of a rascal, opted to wear some very au courant running shoes—arguably, by recent metrics, the sneaker of the moment—is perhaps a matter of the prank economy. Spiritually, Asics are a nice guy sneaker. On the spectrum of dirtbag podcast guys’ sneakers of choice, a pair of fresh-out-the-box Kayano 14s probably ranks pretty low. (Other Asics models like the retro Gel-Saga, or perhaps even Adidas Sambas, might slot in higher.) To paraphrase one of my colleagues: “You’re never going to get ghosted by a guy wearing Asics.”
Healy is rumored to be dating pop megastar Taylor Swift, has been seen in the audience at her blockbuster Eras tour, and even performed alongside Eras opener Phoebe Bridgers during a recent tour stop in Philadelphia. Last month, the pair was photographed together at Electric Lady Studios in New York City: Healy was wearing his usual beat-up brown work boots; Swift, meanwhile, sported a pair of low-profile ballet sneakers from The Row.
Their potential romance has set social media on fire, its glow either resembling the warm light of a campfire or the vibrating heat of a dumpster ablaze. It has also helped fuel the minutiae-driven TikTok gossip industry, which first incorrectly identified Healy’s sneakers as a relatively hype-ier version of the Kayano 14 released in collaboration with Montreal-based brand JJJJound. (JJJJound collab shoes do have a tendency to pop up in baffling places; last year, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy wore a pair of JJJJound New Balance 990s to a memorial event in Kyiv.) And funnily enough, if you Google “matty healy asics,” you’re most likely to encounter an Asics pro trail runner who also happens to be named Matt Healy.
But the fashion writer Mosha Lundström Halbert pointed out in a TikTok that Matty appears to be wearing a women’s version of the shoe, per the blueish-black gel detailing on the midsole. Now, it would be delusional to assume that anyone involved in Matty’s footwear choice was aware that the official name of this blueish-black color per the product description is…“midnight.” And yet…
Matty Healy, in his Midnights Asics era? Alas, stranger things have happened.
