Paciotti 4US Story

By Antonio Malara

In my post “Back to the past” I mentioned a pair of shoes by Cesare Paciotti and I’ll do it again now but for a good reason. The nineties has been a decade of changing in the fashion industry, either clothes and accessories. The jeans as a daily piece of clothing, was normal for teenagers but not yet for adults (for adults I mean 30 years old men). Step by step major brands like Versace, Dolce&gabbana started to make the jeans a different piece, something that could also be worn for night events. Levi’s jeans wasn’t anymore the only big brand. The fashion designer started to produce their personal (but not cheap) jeans with the big logo normally placed in the back. They brought their big names to the “masses”, I mean it was finally possible to wear something casual from Versace, not only a suit for a ceremony. Same thing for the shoes, on our daily life we used to wear Converse, runners by Fila or Reebok (even if I always had my personal style buying different kind of shoes), but the concept of sneakers was around the corner. In the nineties Paciotti comes out with a revolutionary shoe, it was the Paciotti 4US line. The brand produced a sneaker in leather, with and without laces, in many colors, with a “mustache” design on the sides. People with more personality used to buy those without laces which were my favorite. As I said in my post I bought many shoes from Paciotti but never that model. Today we have infinite models of sneakers (even totally new like the slip-on or the socks sneakers) but I consider that pair of shoes “the first sneaker” because Paciotti literally introduced the model for first (personally I don’t remember any other sneaker before that).
Well I’m happy to announce that after twenty years I’ve finally bought the “Paciotti 4US Story” (that’s how they call the model now), surprisingly I found online again this iconic model, three different colors with and without laces. I bought the blue navy without laces! The shoes have four cm of platform in the back and two in the front but they’re so comfortable and for the weather we have in my city, I can consider them a four seasons shoes. This is a top quality shoe and I love the fact that it takes twenty seconds to wear it, the design is still cool despite all the years. 
It’s so strange for me to wear them today, this piece was one of my teenage dream and I never thought I would have been able to wear them. I want to use these shoes as an example that we need to be always positive and that maybe for some strange reasons even our old wishes will come true.

---

Photo: Antonio Malara