Straye

Straye is a shoe brand, not a deck brand. And there’s one thing worth knowing before anything else: who runs it. Straye belongs to Angel Cabada, the man behind KR3W and Supra, and the brand’s own site says so plainly — on the About page he lists Supra’s Skytop and KR3W’s K-Slim jeans as his résumé. Today it’s a one-owner company: “STRAYE is owned and run by Angel Cabada. No corporate strings, no outside hands,” says the ownership page, which adds that “past affiliates like BBC International and Jamie Thomas are out.”

History

Straye surfaced publicly in May 2017, when Thrasher reported that Chad Muska was teaming up with Jamie Thomas and Angel Cabada to build it. That line lands differently if you remember 1996: Muska’s part in “Welcome to Hell”, Toy Machine’s video, was pulled on the night of the premiere after a fight with Ed Templeton and Jamie Thomas himself. Twenty-one years later the two of them were on the same shoe project. At that point the store was still password-locked; the first real product news came in December 2020, when Thrasher announced a Straye x Zero collab with Jamie Thomas. Since then the brand has absorbed KR3W: the jeans and the Slackers now sell on the same site as the shoes.

The shoes

The range revolves around the Logan, the house silhouette, which comes as the standard, the Puff, the Stomper, the Teddy and a mule. Around it sit the Fuego (slimmer, more minimal), the Olympic, the high-top Venice and Venice Stomper, the Hollywood, the Ventura and, as the stripped-back options, the Gower and the Lenox: canvas, zero foam padding, sold only on straye.com. The build repeats across the line: tall foxing, padded collar and tongue, elastic tongue straps so they go on like a slip-on, grippy vulcanised rubber outsole and extra-thick ACIDDROP insoles — their own part, with a thicker heel bed and a textured mesh lining so the foot doesn’t slide. The whole line runs with zero toe spring and is deliberately flexible. A chapter of its own: the SKTP.01 and the VDR.01, which Cabada openly presents as remasters of the Skytop and the Vaider he first introduced at Supra, now on a chunkier sole with updated proportions.

Who it’s for

Straye is for people who want volume, padding and a shoe you can see: high tops, fat tongues, plenty of foot. If your criteria are board feel and the least possible material between foot and griptape, look at the Gower or the Lenox — or go to another brand. Line it up against the rest in the shoe catalog.