BEAMS has been putting its name on Salomon shoes since at least 2023, and the results have mostly been exercises in subtraction, blacked-out versions of shoes that were already quiet. The XT-Quest GTX arriving November 12 goes the other way. The Tokyo retailer added hardware, specifically two ski boot buckles strapped across the lacing, and it is the first of these collaborations where somebody can tell what was changed from across a room.
The XT-Quest is the newer end of Salomon’s sneaker line and the part of it still arguing with the XT-6. Salomon broke into fashion on that shoe, a 2013 S/Lab trail racer re-released through its Sportstyle range in 2018 and then adopted by people who had never run a trail, and most of the decade since has gone into recoloring that one chassis. That shoe is still arriving in new makeups, which is the problem and the business at once. The XT-Quest is one of several answers to the charge that the company owns a single silhouette. It is wider and more structured, with the chassis left visible at the heel, built around Salomon’s contaGRIP outsole compound, the advancedCHASSIS stability frame and the sensiFIT cradle that wraps the midfoot rather than pulling it closed with the laces alone.
The line has grown fast enough to have tiers. Salomon currently lists a standard XT-Quest, a GORE-TEX version, an Expedition build and a project with L’Art de l’Automobile, and the BEAMS pair slots in as the fifth. That is a lot of product for a silhouette most people outside the Salomon conversation could not name, and it measures how hard the brand is pushing to get off the XT-6.
What BEAMS did here is narrow and good. Two buckle straps lifted out of alpine boot hardware cross the forefoot and the instep over the standard quicklace system, each anchored on webbing and closed with a toothed metal cam. They are not decorative the way a strap usually is on a sneaker, because they sit where a boot’s would and close the same way. Everything else is held down. The build runs black on black on black, premium ripstop over the toe and quarters with a GORE-TEX membrane underneath, and a webbing strap across each tongue printed XT-QUEST x BEAMS. The sockliners read Salomon and BEAMS, split by a bar. The closures are ATOP cam units, the ratchet hardware that turns up on snowboard and cycling boots, which is a more specific borrow than the phrase ski boot buckle suggests and a better one. The only break in the color is the red contaGRIP mark on the outsole and a small red tab riding the midsole, visible when the shoe is upside down or when its wearer is walking away.
That matters because it is the first BEAMS Salomon that is a design rather than a palette. The XT-Pathway in 2023 and the XT-Whisper last October were both stealth exercises, and they were good at it, but an all-black version of an existing shoe is a decision anyone can make and several hundred brands already have. Buckles are a position. They argue that the point of this partnership is Salomon’s mountain hardware rather than Salomon’s proximity to streetwear, which is the harder case to make in a market that has spent five years buying trail shoes for the subway.
BEAMS has earned the right to that position. It opened in February 1976 as a single Harajuku store of about 230 square feet, called American Life Shop BEAMS, selling a version of West Coast American dress back to Tokyo, and it grew into the template every select shop since has copied. A retailer with that history putting hardware on a Salomon is not a logo deal.
It also arrives as the footwear anchor of a full BEAMS capsule rather than a one-off, with a jacket, pants, a tee, a cap, a bandana and a shoulder bag all dated the same day. The shoes that ship with a wardrobe around them tend to be the ones a brand expects to carry a season. Compare that to how the XT-EVO reached the market through Kith before Salomon put it in line on its own site four weeks later. One is a partner launching a silhouette. This is a partner redrawing one.
Salomon lists the pair at $240. The standard XT-Quest is $200 and the GORE-TEX version without the collaboration is $220, so the buckles and the BEAMS labels cost twenty dollars over the shoe underneath them. That is the same twenty-dollar premium Salomon charged on the Pas Normal Studios Aero Blaze 4 GRVL last week, and it is the cheapest collaboration tax in the current Salomon range by a wide margin, with the L’Art de l’Automobile XT-Quest at $250 and the MM6 Maison Margiela work running several times past it.
The Salomon XT-Quest GTX BEAMS in Black, article reference L45459900, releases November 12 at $240 through Salomon and at BEAMS. The rest of the capsule lands the same day and is dated on the Salomon launch calendar, which is also where the XT-EVO general release is listed for November 17.
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