There are collaborations born to make noise and collaborations born to build. The one between A-Cold-Wall* and Salomon belongs to the second family: the London label of "British industrial sportswear" got its hands on the ACS Pro, one of the best-loved silhouettes in the French sportstyle catalog, and rebuilt it piece by piece. The result, on sale since July 1, 2026, is the partnership's first sneaker to actually reach stores. And it was worth the wait.

A reconstruction, not a restyle

Calling it a colorway would be an understatement. Of the original ACS Pro, the floating TPU cage and the multi-layer midsole remain: everything else has been rethought. The upper adopts a Matryx technical mesh with Kevlar yarns, reinforced by a protective rubber toe cap that extends across toe and heel like armour. Suede overlays on the lace panel and heel warm up the look, while panels and exposed stitching spell out the approach: the deconstructed, material-first aesthetic that is the London brand's signature. The most recognizable details are the eyelets with a deliberately worn wood-effect finish and the asymmetric lacing that breaks the shoe's technical symmetry. Underneath, a rough-grained midsole and a Contagrip outsole, because the trail substance is non-negotiable.

Two versions: "Black Olive/Bog/Icicle", built on dark grays, olive and earth tones, and "Bluing/Earth Brown/Black Olive", with bright royal blue mesh and high-visibility yellow hardware (on the A-Cold-Wall* site they are listed as "Iron Ore" and "House Blue"). Salomon retail price: $220, unisex sizing, available through both brands' channels and at selected retailers.

The brand that learned to walk on its own

A necessary clarification, because the knee-jerk assumption still circulates online: this collaboration does not carry Samuel Ross's signature. The founder, who came up under Virgil Abloh, left the A-Cold-Wall* board at the end of 2023 and sold the brand in February 2024 to the Tomorrow group, which in turn passed it a few months later to Four Marketing. Today the brand has no single creative director: it works as a collective led by design director William Slocombe and brand director Liam Hassimi, and it is this team that built the dialogue with Salomon. The first taste had arrived at the SS25 collection presentation in summer 2024, with a pair of laceless runway Salomons never put on sale; two years on, the project reaches maturity with a real shoe, produced and distributed.

The campaign says a lot about the direction taken too: shot on the streets of London, it brings together jazz musician Shabaka Hutchings and rapper Reek0, two different creative worlds against a post-industrial Britain. Not just any two faces, but two voices that embody exactly the layered idea of urban culture on which the brand built its identity. More than selling a shoe, A-Cold-Wall* is still telling the story of a landscape: concrete, rain, music, and it is precisely this coherence that allowed it to survive its founder's exit.

Salomon, the outdoor name fashion fights over

For Salomon this is yet another confirmation of a now-consolidated status: no outdoor brand is more fiercely fought over by avant-garde fashion. The ACS Pro descends from the house's adventure-shoe lineage, begun in the late Nineties with the GCS designed by Christian Tresser, the man behind some of the most celebrated runners of the era, and continued in 2005 with the GCS Pro, a shoe built for adventure racing and mixed terrain. In 2022 the platform was reworked as a lifestyle shoe under its current name (ACS stands for Agile Chassis System) and quickly became an if-you-know-you-know shoe, the kind those in the know recognize at a glance: not by chance, Salomon has just celebrated the family's twentieth anniversary, from technical tool to fixture of the fashion capitals. On the collaboration front, the French brand has already linked up with MM6 Maison Margiela, with Comme des Garçons and, on the more radical side, with 11 by Boris Bidjan Saberi: the A-Cold-Wall* ACS Pro earns its place in this lineage, bringing London's brutalist lexicon with it.

For A-Cold-Wall*, which had previously collaborated on sneakers with Nike and Converse, the move to Salomon is almost a conceptual homecoming: technical materials, real function, zero gratuitous decoration. Gorpcore may well have reached saturation point, but when the project is this coherent the conversation changes: there is no nostalgia to capitalize on here, no hype to ride, just two design offices speaking the same language.

The A-Cold-Wall* x Salomon ACS Pro is available from July 1, 2026 on salomon.com and at selected retailers, at a list price of $220 (note: the dollar price shown on the A-Cold-Wall* site is higher, as it is converted from sterling). Hard to imagine a better debut for a partnership that, by every indication, will not stop here.