Why Am I Seeing These Salomon Hiking Shoes Everywhere … Except Hiking Trails?

To say it plainly: The XT-6s feel like they were designed in 2013.

They may have been best-in-class in 2013, to the point of being almost over-engineered back then. But in 2025, some of this shoe’s technology feels a little dated.

The XT-6s have a thin sole that seems to be made entirely of EVA foam, which is a little too firm for my own daily-wear preferences — especially because we’re in the golden age of athletic shoe foams. There are plush, lightweight materials available in 2025 that simply did not exist in 2013. Every year, footwear manufacturers are concocting new foam blends, chasing greater and greater energy return and improved performance. These technological advances can even be found in Salomon’s own 2025 lineup of trail shoes.

The toe shape of the XT-6 is fairly narrow. This isn’t ideal for a wide-footed person like me, and shoes with wider, often-more-natural toe boxes are also becoming increasingly common across brands.

Yes, trail runners and hiking shoes are typically narrower and firmer than running shoes, in order to give the wearer precision and stability across uncertain terrain. But even with this in mind, the XT-6 shoes feel like they belong to an older generation of footwear, inspired in part by the era of minimalist athletic shoes from which they came. The XT-6s will never be (nor were they designed to be) as comfortable as the big, cushy running shoes that are in vogue today, including those from Hoka, Saucony, and ON.

If I were in the market primarily for performance, I would first look at literally any of Salomon’s latest offerings over the XT-6 shoes.

But my biggest hangup is one that is almost impossible to hold against the XT-6: its own popularity.

The XT-6s are so ubiquitous that I feel almost self-conscious when I’m wearing them. I see so many pairs every day that I wonder if other people are also noticing mine, too.

At times, I find it hard to wear these shoes in a way that is wholly divorced from the hype surrounding them, so much so that I’ve been tempted to cut off the brightly colored strip on the tongue.

Why, then, am I still so drawn to them? It is a thing I cannot fully understand. They aren’t my most stylish shoes, nor are they my most comfortable ones, but they do more of both at the same time than anything else in my closet.

The shifting and amorphous demands of a reporter’s semi-professional wardrobe are a reflection of a shifting and amorphous life; it’s defined not by place or time, by city or country, or by assignment or occasion, but instead by the paradoxical need to be all of those things at once. To be ready for everything and nothing, to exist at the mathematical midpoint between preparedness and presentability.

That is an impossible standard, but still these shoes attempt to deliver on all of these elusive facets of versatility, and they very nearly do. And if the XT-6s have been popular for 12 years, they must be doing something right.

This article was edited by Hannah Rimm and Maxine Builder.