Kith Turns Fifteen With an Old Tokyo Palette on the 990v3, Plus a Blacked-Out Sequel

Grey pigskin, purple perforations, a pink N: Kith’s anniversary New Balance borrows a United Arrows recipe from Tokyo, then flips it into black and neon green.

Kith shot its new New Balance pair the way a museum might shoot ceramics. In the campaign Kith published on September 30, two pairs of the Made in USA 990v3 sit on slate stepping stones and raked gravel, one in pale grey with a pink N, the other in black with a neon green one. The grey pair carries a hue recipe that started in Tokyo with United Arrows, one Kith has now revisited three times in eight years, each time on a different New Balance model.

Signal. What happened: Kith, United Arrows & Sons and New Balance unveiled two Made in USA 990v3 colorways built for Kith’s fifteenth anniversary, the trio’s third reworking of the grey, purple and pink United Arrows palette. Exact object: the Kith x United Arrows & Sons x New Balance Made in USA 990v3, in the returning grey/purple/pink scheme and an all-new, predominantly black scheme with neon green accents. When and where: October 2, 2026 at 11 AM Eastern, exclusively in the United States, in Kith stores, on Kith.com and on the Kith App, which also hosts a Worldwide Region drawing with international shipping that runs until 11:59 PM on Thursday, October 1, with early access for Voyage Loyalty Members. Source: Kith’s release announcement on its Discover blog, which lists no price, while Kith’s own Made in USA 990v3 listings sit at $220, the figure release listings also give for each of these pairs. Why it matters: a Japanese menswear colorway is being reissued by a New York retailer for the third time, in the same week Kith is putting its entire footwear history on the record. Earlier: cover of the Kith x adidas Samba “Denim” for Fall 2026, plus recent New Balance 9060 and 991 Essential pieces.

Up close, the grey pair sticks to the script that Kith founder Ronnie Fieg has followed since 2018. Kith lists a dark grey mesh vamp under light grey pigskin suede overlays, purple on the perforated toe and collar panels, and pink on the N logos, the midsole and the heel windows. Kith says the black tongue and heel tab carry over from the two earlier collaborations; on a shoe this quiet, they frame the pink at the back like a dark mat around a print.

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The second pair breaks new ground for the partner: a predominantly noir colorway built from the same materials. The mesh vamp stays dark grey, the pigskin suede overlays turn black, and the perforated toe and collar panels switch to light grey. Neon green takes over every job pink does on the other pair: the N logos, the midsole and the heel windows.

Side by side, the two shoes read almost like a photograph and its negative. The grey pair puts pale suede around darker purple perforations; the black pair puts dark suede around pale ones.

Both pairs carry the same anniversary hardware. The dubraes are branded for Kith and United Arrows & Sons, and the insoles pair a Kith fifteenth anniversary crest with United Arrows & Sons and New Balance logos. In Kith’s own photo the crest is printed in purple on the grey pair and in lime on the black one. Each pair comes in custom packaging, with an illustration of its own colorway on the shoebox lid and an accompanying dust bag.

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The palette is older than Kith. United Arrows, the Tokyo retailer founded in 1989 by Yasuto Kamoshita, Hirofumi Kurino and Osamu Shigematsu, first put it on a Made in USA 997.5 through its Beauty & Youth label, a release Kith dates to 2008: a grey suede base with purple and pink accents. Fieg has called it his favorite New Balance colorway ever, and he has kept finding reasons to bring it back.

The first return came in November 2018. Kith’s 2018 New Balance collection ran six colorways across three silhouettes, the 997 OG, the 997S and the 997S Fusion, with three pairs dressed in the United Arrows grey, black, purple, pink and cream and three more nodding to nonnative‘s 997.5 in browns and cobalt blue. Both Japanese partners also sold the shoes online at the same 11 AM Eastern start.

 

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In 2022 the palette moved again, onto the Made in USA 990v4, this time in adult and kids’ sizing. The partner credited on the box across these Kith projects is United Arrows & Sons, a label that began in April 2010 as a menswear concept on the basement floor of United Arrows’ Harajuku main store, curated by buyer Motofumi “Poggy” Kogi around a mix of street, high fashion and luxury, the same blend Kith has sold in New York since 2011.

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The 990v3 arrives at the end of a week Kith spent looking backward on purpose. On September 30, fifteen years to the day after the company was founded, Kith released Kith: The Footwear Archive, a 444-page catalogue raisonné from Assouline that gathers more than 1,800 collaborative models from Fieg’s archive, unreleased and developmental prototypes included. From September 25 to 27, every pair in the book went on public display at 25 Kent Avenue in Brooklyn, and both 990v3 pairs were reportedly seen there, boxed, before Kith formally announced them.

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Fieg has framed the book as a checkpoint rather than a summary. “I think about the twenty-year book, the thirty-year book,” he said in Kith’s announcement of its rel.

By that logic, the grey, purple and pink 990v3 is a chapter, not a finale. The palette even predates the company celebrating it: Kith was founded in 2011, three years after Beauty & Youth’s 997.5, and on October 2 that colorway moves onto yet another New Balance chassis, this time with a dark twin beside it.