Last month, New Balance Gallery were lucky enough to get the chance to design two pairs of New Balance from the NB1 custom site, which you can find here. It’s taken some time to get round to shooting each pair, but first up, we’re going to take a look at “NB Gallery 2”, which is a pair designed by Thomas.

I don’t know about you, but over the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time on the New Balance custom site designing colourways on the 574, and then the 998 when it was introduced not so long ago, so it was good to finally get my hands on a couple of pairs. The current options at the time of designing were suede and mesh, along with reflective detailing, but currently nubuck leather accents are also available.

In total, there are 18 parts that you can customise on the 998, and my wish list on the NB site was already stacked full of previous designs, but I wanted to create something new, and go with something that would be super wearable for me, so it was a no brainer to start the base colour off with navy on the saddle, tongue, and base underlay. The ‘navy’ actually turned out to be a lot darker than I had thought it would be, and looks almost black.

Usually, you would use a darker colour around the toe wrap and heel wrap, but I went with ‘ocean blue’ on these areas, as well as matching the lining and tongue stitching.

Next up are there accents, which include the base accent, and heel accent, and for these two parts, I wanted there to be some form of reflective detailing on the shoes, so these were the perfect places for it. I used ‘juniper’, which is one of my favourite colourways available from the current palette, and I think it adds the perfect amount of pop against the navy and ocean blue.

For the two piece ‘N’, I’ve always been a fan of a reflective backer, so I went with reflective ‘juniper’ to match the other reflective accents, and then ‘asteroid’ on the top piece, also in reflective material. You can also customise the speed lace and the collar accent, which are molded plastic pieces, and I just used ‘black’ on these to keep things simple and discreet.

Now to onto the rear of the shoe, which is one of the most customisable areas because of the fact this is where you can really personalise the design with some text. I was tempted to not bother at all, but I ended up going very simple with “NB” on the left heel, and “GALLERY2” on the right shoe, both in ‘navy’ so that it blended it rather than stood out. While we’re on the subject of the heel area, I used ‘asteroid’ for the heel tab, and ‘ocean blue’ for the NB logo stitching.

There’s not much left to go over now, just the laces and the sole unit. For the laces, if they aren’t white, I always try to match the laces to the midsole colour, or to the tongue colour, so I went with ‘navy’. There are only four sole unit options, and I wanted to make use of two of them since I was designing two pairs, so for this pair, I went with the ‘cyclone’ sole unit as it best matched the colourway of the upper.

Check out what they look like on-foot below, and stay tuned to our site for more on NB1 in the future. We still have three more of our personal designs to cover, as well as some exciting content to come for NB1 themselves. In the meantime, if you want to check out Thomas’ design, then click here. Big shout to NB1 for giving us the opportunity!