Soledition – Meet India’s Young, Stylish and Sneaker-Obsessed

It’s 2 pm on a lazy Sunday. But hundreds of youngsters – mostly in their twenties and thirties – are waiting in a long serpentine queue to get to the seventh floor of Eros Multi Level Parking in Delhi’s Nehru Place.

There’s no one high-street trend that they are blindly mimicking. But no matter how different they look, there’s one unifying thing about them: they are all wearing eye-catching sneakers.

Welcome to Soledition, the first-of-its-kind festival for the rising sneakerhead subculture in the country. But don’t let the term put you off with its seemingly consumeristic nomenclature. Economics may be a central part of it now, but it’s ultimately a subculture of people who value individuality and a sense of community, and hope to find both through the medium of shoes.