SALOMON'S XT-ICONS CAPSULE PUTS 4 SHOES IN A $185 PALETTE

Salomon's XT-ICONS campaign found its shape this month. Forms is the $185 capsule behind it, a color story built from Pearl Blue, Grisaille and Vanilla Ice across four Sportstyle silhouettes, the XT-6, the XT-4 OG, the XT-Whisper and the XT-Pathway 2. Salomon's own campaign copy calls these shapes silhouettes that evolved from performance origins into enduring fixtures of the brand's universe, and Forms treats that line like a design brief instead of a slogan. No new panels, no new outsole. Four shoes with real trail mileage behind them, dressed in one icy palette so the construction has to do the talking.

$185 Buys the Pearl Blue XT-6, Not a New Mold

The XT-6 in Pearl Blue, Grisaille and Vanilla Ice is the capsule's face and its receipt. It retails for $185 direct from Salomon, available now with no raffle and no regional exclusive. That is five dollars over the $180 price Finally Offline clocked on the XT-6's earlier Paris fashion run, a small enough jump that the shoe reads as the same product in a new coat, not a repriced one. What actually changed is the surface. The XT-6 still runs sensiFIT for lockdown, a Contagrip outsole for grip on wet stone, a dual density EVA midsole and the quickLace pull cord that lets you skip tying laces entirely. Forms just stripped the graphic noise off all of it. Layered mesh underlays that used to sit under bright colorblocking now read as texture on their own. The synthetic overlays reinforcing the toe box and heel counter show their sculpted edges instead of disappearing into a logo hit.

The XT-4 OG Started as a 2012 Trail Shoe, Not a Sneaker

Salomon built the XT-4 OG around 2012 as a technical trail shoe, running an Agile Chassis System underfoot and a two density EVA Energy Cell midsole for shock absorption on rock and root. The brand shelved it as a niche technical model until 2023, when it reissued the XT-4 OG for a lifestyle audience that had already made the XT-6 a streetwear regular. The XT-Whisper is the newest voice in this capsule, and the one Finally Offline already covered for a construction change. Salomon swapped a welded side stripe for an embroidered one on the Whisper earlier this year, a $150 detail shift that signaled the brand was designing these as fashion objects first, performance carryovers second. The XT-Pathway 2 is the quietest name in Forms, without a documented decade of its own the way the XT-6 and XT-4 OG have. Forms treats it the same as the other three anyway. Same palette, same restraint, same argument that construction should carry the shoe.

Kilian Jornet Ran This Chassis Before Anyone Photographed It

Before Forms, before the Sportstyle line existed, the XT-6 was S/LAB hardware. Salomon's S/LAB division built it in 2013 with input from ultra distance athletes including Kilian Jornet and Francois D'haene, runners who cover sixty to more than one hundred miles through mountain terrain in a single push. That is the sport this shoe comes from, not runway, not resale, ultrarunning, a discipline measured in vertical feet and blister count. Salomon put the XT-6 back into its Sportstyle range in 2018, and the same chassis that survived Alpine ultras started showing up on sidewalks instead. The caption behind this signal calls that arc an evolution into enduring fixtures of the Salomon universe. The receipts hold up. This is not a shoe that borrowed performance language for a marketing line. It ran the miles first and got photographed decades later.

This Capsule Skips the Featured Collaborator

Forms has no featured designer, no artist credit and no limited count published anywhere in the campaign materials. That breaks from most of Salomon's other 2026 headlines, which needed a credited partner to make news. The Paris collaboration with L'Art de L'Automobile dressed the XT-6 in automotive streetwear codes earlier this year, and the Colombian artist Feid put his FERXXO name on an XT-Pathway 2 release before that. Forms skips all of it. No guest name, no capsule countdown timer, just Salomon dressing its own archive in one palette and asking four shoes to hold the room by themselves. That is a different kind of bet than a collaboration. A collab sells on the name attached to the box. Forms is selling the argument that the XT-6, the XT-4 OG, the XT-Whisper and the XT-Pathway 2 do not need one anymore.

Buy the Pearl Blue XT-6 if the capsule needs one purchase. $185 gets the clearest statement piece, sensiFIT and Contagrip intact under a palette restrained enough to wear with anything in a closet. Wait on the XT-Pathway 2 until Salomon publishes its own history the way it already has for the 2013 XT-6 and the 2012 XT-4 OG. Skip nothing here for construction reasons. Forms did not cut a corner to fit four models into one palette. It stopped shouting about the construction and let Pearl Blue, Grisaille and Vanilla Ice do the work that fiery reds and bright colorblocking used to do, on shoes with close to fifteen years of trail mileage behind the oldest two names alone.