Salomon built its name on ski hardware, and the XT-Quest GTX BEAMS puts that hardware where everyone can see it. Two ratchet buckle straps, lifted from the closure kit of an alpine boot, cross the forefoot and the instep of a blacked-out trail shoe built for BEAMS’ 50th anniversary.
Nothing hides underneath the straps. Thin cord laces still run their crisscross below both buckles, and a printed XT-QUEST x BEAMS strap crosses each tongue.
Price: $267
Where to buy: BEAMS
Style code L45459900, colorway Black / Black / Black
Hardware off a ski boot
BEAMS buyer Shinya Watanabe says his team worked through the buckle components by trial and error, sweating the design and the specifications until the hardware sat right on a shoe.
Each strap is a toothed ladder that feeds a cam unit. It’s the same ratchet logic a skier thumbs shut at a lift line. And the pair of them sit where the lower two buckles sit on a boot, one over the forefoot, one over the instep.
Salomon started in Annecy in 1947, making ski edges in the French Alps. Boots came later. Buckles were the family trade long before trail shoes were.
Ryosuke Nozaki, the BEAMS buyer who led the project, calls it the retailer’s first global collaboration with Salomon, and the anniversary globe logo rides along on every piece.
BEAMS opened in Harajuku in 1976 as American Life Shop BEAMS, one small store selling a Tokyo version of West Coast American dress. Fifty years on it’s the template every Japanese select shop since has copied. A retailer with that history gets to put hardware on a Salomon and call it an anniversary.
BEAMS built its anniversary series on one word: Hybridization. Born in the Alps, refined in Tokyo is the concept line the retailer gives it. Fifteen topics carry the 50th series, and this collection is the second, the one where French mountain hardware closes over a Tokyo brief.
The XT-6 made Salomon a fashion fixture, a trail racer from the S/Lab line that crossed over and stayed. XT-Quest is the other bet in the family, boot-bred instead of race-bred, wider and heavier in the hand.
Built for weather
Weather gear carries the rest of the upper, a GORE-TEX membrane under premium ripstop, built to shrug off rain on a trail and slush on a city platform alike.
Underneath, the trail kit stays put. A Contagrip outsole bites on wet rock and packed dirt. The Advanced Chassis frame steadies the heel through the stride, and SensiFit wraps the midfoot in the snug, enveloping hold Salomon builds into its trail line, so the walking gear under the buckles is stock XT-Quest.
One red mark breaks the blackout, the Contagrip tag on the outsole.
Wavy overlays usually break up the XT-Quest’s flanks. Here they are gone, and the shell runs clean ripstop and mesh from toe to heel tab.
Branding stays inside the brief. The tongue straps print XT-QUEST x BEAMS, the sockliners split the two names across the pair, and the anniversary globe is worked into the products rather than pasted across them.
The base shoe has been Salomon’s hybrid since 2018. XT-Quest mashes the XT-Wings trail runner into the bones of the Quest 4D hiking boot, which is why it wears a boot’s stance on a runner’s sole.
The rollout and the other six pieces
Price in Japan is set at about $267, tax included.
Tokyo got it first. BEAMS Harajuku pre-released the collection on Friday, November 6, with a launch party that night, and BEAMS stores plus the online shop followed Saturday.
Salomon’s own stores take their turn on Thursday, November 12, in Japan and around the world, which makes November 12 the Salomon step of the rollout rather than the first release.
Six more pieces wear the same blackout. Every one of them carries the globe logo and the same ripstop language as the shoe. The prices run from bandana money up to a jacket that costs nearly what the shoe does, which makes the shoe the anchor of the collection rather than its most expensive line.
A nylon jacket at about $212 builds a zippered pouch and a backpack-style bungee cord into its back panel, in wind-resistant ripstop with a drawstring hood and hem, so the pack you forgot is drawn onto the jacket instead. Matching nylon pants at about $134 use the same fabric, with an adjustable waist, hem drawstrings and zippered back pockets.
The T-shirt, at about $50, is organic cotton with an XT-Quest BEAMS graphic across the back. A packable ripstop-check cap runs about $45. A packable tote with padded shoulder straps and its own stuff sack runs about $72, and the stretch bandana, moisture-wicking and quick-drying, runs about $28.
Price: $267
Where to buy: BEAMS
Fifty years in, BEAMS could have asked for a logo swap and a quiet colorway. It asked for hardware instead, and Salomon’s own back catalog supplied it.
The shoe is on sale at BEAMS now. Salomon’s own stores follow on November 12.
