ROWING BLAZERS X SPERRY: SUMMER ’23

We’ve once again teamed up with longtime collaborators Sperry — this time on a collection of summery Cloud CVO deck sneakers and Seamate canvas boat shoes inspired by the 80s and 90s. The new capsule is the latest installment of our ongoing Summer ’23 collection: a celebration of texture, color, and pattern spanning the American summer canon from O’ahu to Nantucket.

The Summer ‘23 Rowing Blazers x Sperry collection consists of three different styles of Sperry's timeless Cloud CVO canvas deck sneakers: one featuring a madras pattern based on the iconic cover of Lisa Birnbach’s 1980 cult classic The Official Preppy Handbook; one featuring embroidered names of cities in which Rowing Blazers has had stores and pop-ups throughout its 6-year history; and one in a decidedly 90s colorblock. The capsule also includes a pair of Seamate 2-Eye boat shoes in Blackwatch tartan madras. 

“WE’VE COLLABORATED WITH SPERRY FOR A FEW YEARS NOW, AND I LOVE EVERYTHING WE’VE CREATED — FROM CHUNKY WHITE SNEAKERS TO MISMATCHED RUGBY STRIPE BOAT SHOES. BUT I THINK THIS IS ACTUALLY MY FAVORITE CAPSULE.”

“We’ve collaborated with Sperry for a few years now, and I love everything we’ve created — from chunky white sneakers to mismatched rugby stripe boat shoes,” explains Rowing Blazers founder and creative director Jack Carlson. "But I think this is actually my favorite capsule.”

Paul Sperry invented the world’s first boat shoe — now known as the Authentic Original Top-Sider and hailed by The Official Preppy Handbook as “the footwear symbol of classic Prep style” — after noting the ease with which his dog navigated his cutter’s slippery decks. Sperry noticed small grooves on the pads of its paws, and was inspired to carve similar channels into the bottom of a solid rubber sole. His intuition was rewarded: the new, grooved soles provided much-improved traction in wet and icy conditions, and the Cloud CVO was born, becoming a global fashion staple. A decade later, they’d be named as one of the official shoes of the U.S. Navy.