The Jack Harlow x New Balance T500 "Olmsted" releases September 4 at 10 a.m. ET on New Balance's website for $130, under style code U5005JD. It is Harlow's take on the T500, an '80s tennis silhouette New Balance now sells as a lifestyle shoe.
Why it is called "Olmsted"
The name belongs to Frederick Law Olmsted, the 19th-century landscape architect behind Central Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and behind Cherokee Park and the broader park system in Louisville, Kentucky. Olmsted designed both the Louisville parks Harlow grew up in and the New York parks of the city he lives in now.
A free pop-up ran at Cherokee Park on August 28 at 3 p.m., releasing the shoe in the park it is named after a week before the general drop.
The shoe
The T500 goes fully monochrome in a dark brown New Balance calls "Black Coffee" — a single material carried across the shoe's multi-layered upper, with brown laces and a matching translucent sole. Sources differ on that material: Hypebeast describes it as soft, wrinkled leather, while Gear Patrol reports synthetic leather across the overlays, inlays, "N" logo, tongue and perforated toe box. The branding is minimal: the "N" is inset into the sidewall rather than stitched on as an overlay, the heel "NB" is embroidered tonally, and the tongue tag has been removed entirely.
Where New Balance's $120 950 with Cooper Flagg sells on the athlete's name and the JJJJound 740N "Mushroom" sells on a designer's minimalism, the T500 "Olmsted" carries no visible Harlow branding at all. New Balance lists it on its own site under the Jack Harlow x New Balance T500 product page.
It lands on a crowded September 4, the same day the FC Barcelona x Nike Kobe 3 Low Protro arrives at $200.
Source: Sole Retriever, Hypebeast, Gear Patrol
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