Sneakers are framed historically, and within the current sustainable trend, echoing the growth of emerging brands, start-ups, and high-end fashion companies involved in the challenge of innovating bio-materials. The aim is to demonstrate how this fashion item, strongly bound to social phenomena such as cultural and gender issues, is capable of reconfiguring the fashion industrial and commercial paradigm. This challenge is not free from contradictions, but it nurtures a fertile ground for experimentation, and a more solid sustainable culture in dialogue with nature. The research emerges from a fellow-ship carried out at Università Iuav di Venezia in 2020-2021.