McINTOSH × HIFI LVRS

Why a Nike

McIntosh is American. The rule stops there and the rest followed: a Dunk Low, the most documented silhouette in the American wardrobe, the one whose construction everybody knows and on which any slip shows immediately.

All of it is painted

All of it is painted. No cutting, no rebuilding: a black Dunk Low, and the McIntosh vocabulary laid down with brush and aerosol.

It is the most demanding choice available, and not the most spectacular. Paint forgives nothing — there is no stitch to correct a line, no panel to replace if the hand shakes. On a black pair, every stroke is visible.

The result isn’t a shoe with a logo on it: it is the transcription of a machine. First the two lights no other house can claim — the blue of the VU meters, the green of the backlit logo. Then the details only a regular would catch: the MIP200 Power Controller lettering carried onto the side panel, the red square of the standby/ON button, the VU meter scale with its watts and decibels, and the 75th anniversary monogram — McIntosh was founded in 1949, the pair is from January 2024.

Premium leather and suede, custom paint, one piece only. An audiophile names the brand without reading it, and recognises the machine before recognising the shoe.

Klipsch in Osaka

In 2026 this pair went to Japan. A trip organised by Onkyo for the company’s anniversary, with distributors from around the world, and a listening session on an OJAS system. I was there, wearing the McIntosh.

Here is what the photograph actually says: the room was running Klipsch. American speakers, installed in Japan by a New York workshop, heard by distributors from ten countries, in front of a French publisher in an American Dunk. Hi-fi culture has been crossed for a long time — the same-country rule isn’t a border, it’s a design constraint we impose so that every pair has a reason to exist.

Arthur Berquet · The manifesto