[awad]

It's not necessarily one or the other but definitely skews towards the aesthetics/fashion element. That said, the best designed sneakers often rank highly on both of those dimensions. Another poster mentioned Nike's rise in running shoes. They're highly functional, often the best in the game, but also designed with enough attention to aesthetics to be seen on the foot of many executives in their day to day lives. That's good design.

To the gp's point, the single pair of UA sneakers I own are highly functional and sport-specific that only come out at the gym...but picking them out of a crowd of UA's lineup is difficult.

[dole]

To sneakerheads, fashion and aesthestics value far more than function and performance. Sneakerheads being a [large] subset of the current streetwear trend, exclusivity is another major factor for inflated prices in streetwear and sneakers.

Timed and location specific drops of exclusive, limited edition, special colorway variants of shoes, clothes and all other types of popular gear raises value. As mentioned, StockX majorly drives the market, and the exclusivity leads the savvy (or obsessed) consumer to seek advantages over others: bots, bulk buying, captcha solving, DDoSing, proxies, and the usual exploits are employed. The prices and value may be ridiculous but obviously, it's worth it to someone and there's lots of money to be made.

[dadarepublic]

> To the gp's point, the single pair of UA sneakers I own are highly functional and sport-specific that only come out at the gym...but picking them out of a crowd of UA's lineup is difficult.

A very good summary. UA just doesn't have whatever it is that influencers, fashionistas, artists, and designers are looking for - which is mostly style/design/hype attached to good materials, exclusivity and comfort.

It's how great design translates into good brand marketing (read: hype) - UA isn't it.