The Foam Runner was named for a mountain in Armenia, and Armenia noticed

“YEEZY FOAM RUNNER MADE IN USA NOW AVAILABLE.” Ye’s tweet on 26 Jun 2020 was all the warning anyone got. Yeezy Supply put buyers in a waiting room, opened a full size run and sold out. At $75, Hypebeast reported, it was the cheapest Yeezy shoe there’d been.

It didn’t look like anything else adidas had sold with Ye. It’s one moulded piece, with lattice cut-outs down the sides and a sole that runs straight up into the upper. Complex described it as made in the US, from foam that was partly algae.

Snowcaps on Mount Ararat

The first colourway was Ararat. Complex reported it’s named for Kim Kardashian’s Armenian heritage, the white standing for the snowcaps on Mount Ararat, and Armenia’s official Twitter account posted about it.

Steven Smith, Yeezy’s head sneaker designer, told Complex the look came out of mockups he’d done a year earlier. A young adidas designer finished it.

North wore it first

It wasn’t a surprise to everyone. North West had a pair on in June 2019. That November Ye and Smith held the shoe up on stage at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in New York. Ye talked about Yeezy making its own foam from algae.

He kept wearing them after the drop. PAUSE spotted Foam Runners on him at Balenciaga’s couture show in Paris on 7 Jul 2021.

Vermilion to MX Granite

adidas didn’t slow down on colours. An all-red Vermilion landed in October 2021, then MX Sand Grey that December, sand marbled with brown and dusty blue. Stone Sage, with a faint camo pattern, and an all-black Onyx followed in 2022.

adidas ended the partnership on 25 Oct 2022, and the Foam Runner kept coming out anyway. MX Cinder arrived in May 2023. It’s marbled tan and black, with a streak of icy blue. Stone Salt wasn’t far behind. A monotone grey, MX Granite, dropped in March 2024.

It’d started on North’s feet in the summer of 2019. MX Granite went on sale almost 17 months after adidas said it’d stopped making Yeezy product.