The other week, I walked into REI's soon-to-be-missed New York location because I had time to kill (and it's low-key the best sneaker selection in the city). There, I stumbled across a pair of barely worn all-black On Cloudmonster sneakers for $50.

As a a lifelong On skeptic, I would've thought I'd turn up my nose. And yet... the price was right and so was the colorway. Even the shape spoke to me. I tried them on and was blown away. Not just the comfort but the look and feel on foot hit in ways I'd never have expected.

Impressed, I bought them. Later, while checking On's website to see what else I've missed in the years since I long ago dismissed On, I was again blown away. Where did all these great shoes come from? When did On get — gulp — good?

No hate to On, to be clear. It's just that I've always considered it the running brand that also happens to make weird quasi-slip-on sneakers that old men love. Even seeing those shoes again, I'm reminded of my old On stigma. But all this great newness brushes it aside.

What is it that makes these good On sneakers so good? Well, they're kind of ugly. But that's for the better. Beautiful shoes are boring. Shoes with just a dash of ugly, like us humans, have personality.

Just look at the Cloudhorizon 2, Cloudflow 5, Cloud 6 Geo, and even the Cloudsurfer Max designed with luxury supermarket Erewhon (!). Each of these sneakers is defined by a distinct silhouette that's a little weird and a little svelte and a little beefy. These ain't the middling kinda-there, kinda-squashed forms of older On models.

And it really helps that, over the past year or so, On has dialed in its colorways. Whereas it used to push loud makeups that emphasized its shoes' gawky material mix, On's sneakers now wear handsome tonal makeups and even a few flashier styles that give these newly urbane shoes a sense of technical cool.

You know a sneaker is good when it can pull off all-black, which is harder than it sounds. "Triple black" colorways, as they're called, force a shoe's silhouette to stand on its own merits. And if there is no there there, then the shoe falls flat. But that so many of these new On shoes look better in black is proof that there's meat on them there bones.

Credit is presumably due to the progressive partners with whom On has linked over the years. The footwear design acumen of labels like Kith and Invincible has surely rubbed off. So, credit is due to forward-looking labels like Post Archive Faction which grasped the stylistic potential of On many years before the rest of us. I mean, just look at the Cloudsolo shoes that LOEWE recently created with On. Bangers!

These designers understood that On shoes don't look like any other shoes, which is a blessing and a curse. These things really demand careful, contextual (re)consideration, from both creator and consumer.

When I first glimpsed Zendaya's signature On shoe, the Cloudzone Moon, I was unimpressed.

The campaign, as expensive as it looked, made the sneaker look like any other crossover performance shoe. Lightly technical but so streamlined as to be anonymous.

But when you scope the shoe in no-frills product shots, where the rubber meets the road and no blemish can be hidden, they stand tall. Unusual for sure, overtly rounded and softened but still bulbous. Familiar but singular. Maybe even a little ugly. Good ugly.

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