When we were first introduced to New Balance’s 1906 model back in 2022, the shoe was yet another old-school, chunky dad shoe reissued from the Boston-based brand's archives. However, in the years since, it has become so much more.

The 1906 has changed form to become a strange hybrid loafer, a deconstructed showpiece, or a techy outdoor shoe. And its latest evolution has just arrived: the New Balance 1906W.

Freshly uploaded to the New Balance website, the 1906W sees the shoe’s upper reimagined with a distinctly different look. Gone are the streamlined overlays found on the standard 1906R, replaced with synthetic, no-sew overlays in a webbed pattern.

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Offering a series of small, oval-shaped windows to the knitted mesh beneath it, this webbed pattern is not entirely new. Back in 2014, New Balance developed a military-grade running shoe, the New Balance 950v2, exclusively for the Department of Defense which debuted this patterned overlay.

These reinforced straps, designed to make the shoe hard-wearing, were developed entirely for functional reasons, however, they inadvertently give the shoe a look akin to fish scales. Especially in a teal-colored gradient (as is the case in the 1906W’s debut colorway), there’s a definite aquatic quality to the sneaker’s new patterned overlays. 

So far, it’s been a lowkey debut for the newly unleashed 1906W, the shoe has been made available to shop with little fanfare: there’s been no campaign, no teasers of any upcoming collaborations, and no deep-dive into the shoe’s military inspiration from New Balance. 

However, with more colorways of the 1906W reportedly arriving soon, the shoe will surely start to get some marketing from New Balance (and, more likely than not, the collaborations will soon start rolling in). 

This scaly 1906 is a model to keep an eye on.