CARNAN X ASICS REVIVE THE PATH SERIES ON GEL CUMULUS 16

Suede over open mesh, leather panels at the toe box, and stitching left visible instead of hidden under a welt. That is the build CARNAN put on the ASICS GEL Cumulus 16 for Path II, a running shoe from 2014 dressed in a colorway that took the brand two years to circle back to. Purple covers the upper. Teal breaks the branding. Black closes it out on the midsole. Nothing about that palette is decorative; CARNAN and ASICS assign each color a job, and Path II is the second time they have done it on a shoe.

The GEL Cumulus 16 releases through Extra Butter on Thursday, August 20, first come first served in store at both the brand's Lower East Side and Long Island City locations and online at extrabutterny.com. The thesis is simple. CARNAN and ASICS are not chasing a single hype cycle. They are two years into a running collaboration with its own visual language, and Path II proves the language holds on a completely different shoe.

The GEL Cumulus 16 Case Dates Back to 2014

The GEL Cumulus 16 is a 2014 ASICS running platform built around heel and forefoot GEL cushioning units and a FluidRide midsole compound, roughly 15 percent lighter than the foam it replaced. A stock men's pair runs close to 300 grams. CARNAN keeps that chassis intact and works entirely on the upper: suede layered over open mesh, leather trim, and stitching left exposed rather than sealed, giving a shoe built for mileage a handmade, almost patchwork finish. That is the trade CARNAN is making. The Cumulus was never a lifestyle silhouette; it earned its cushioning reputation on treadmills, not runways, which is exactly why dressing it this deliberately reads as a statement instead of a retail refresh.

CARNAN Already Ran This Exact Playbook, on a Brown GEL Quantum 360

CARNAN and ASICS first partnered in April 2024 on a 15 piece collection called Path, built around a brown suede and ripstop GEL Quantum 360 that released through Brazilian pop up stores before landing on CARNAN's own site and then ASICS's, priced at R$999, close to $192 at the time. That release used brown for the earth and green for growth across the shoe and a matching track jacket. Path II keeps the green, drops the earth tone for a full purple that CARNAN says represents the partnership itself, and adds black for continuity. The color vocabulary is the same system, applied to a second shoe two years later, which is a harder thing to pull off than a single good colorway. Vandy The Pink is running a comparable archive minded strategy with ASICS this same month, pulling the 2006 Gel Kayano 12 back into rotation instead of a modern runner, which says ASICS is actively handing multiple partners its cushioning archive at once rather than parceling out one collaboration at a time.

Three FCFS Collabs, Six Weeks, Same Two Doors

Extra Butter is taking the GEL Cumulus 16 Path II first come first served across both its Lower East Side and Long Island City stores plus its own site, the same distribution model it used on adidas's Objects of Legacy pack in July and the Air Jordan 3 True Blue retro before that. Three brand collaborations, three FCFS drops, same two doors, in under six weeks. Retail price has not been announced by CARNAN, ASICS, or Extra Butter as of this writing, which is unusual for a shoe this close to its release date and worth watching once the listing goes live. The US date lands one day behind the Brazil release, where CARNAN's flagship store and ASICS Brazil get the shoe first on August 19 before it goes global.

Buy the Story Now, Confirm the Number Later

A construction this considered, on a case ASICS already proved in performance running, is not a shoe to skip on principle. It is a shoe to wait on for one number. Jordan Brand paired its True Blue retro with an Apple Music series built around the shoe's release year; CARNAN and ASICS are doing something quieter but similar, using a fixed color language across two releases to make a partnership legible without a soundtrack. Buy it if the purple, teal, and black story earns your $200 range on sight. Wait if you want the number confirmed first. Either way, the second chapter is stronger construction than the first.