Before Kith became a global retail institution, there was the East Coast Project — and at the center of it, two pairs of ASICS Gel-Lyte IIIs that told the story of where Ronnie Fieg came from and where he felt most alive.
Released in May 2013, the "New York City" and "Miami Beach" editions of the Gel-Lyte III were the flagship product of Fieg's sprawling ECP capsule, a project that framed sneakers as geography, identity, and allegiance all at once. The concept was simple and deliberate: Fieg's hometown of New York and his self-described "second home" of Miami, rendered in the colors of each city's most iconic sports franchises.
The "New York City" pair landed in Knicks blue and orange — a combination so loaded with meaning for a kid from the boroughs that it barely needed explanation. Construction-wise, Fieg used perforated pigskin suede on the toebox and quarter panel, layered against soft nubuck on the quarter and heel cap. The material choice was intentional: durable enough for winter, breathable enough to carry into spring as the Knicks season wound down. It was a sneaker built for the actual rhythms of New York life.
The "Miami Beach" edition went the other direction — aqua and teal microperf nubuck over woven mesh, with orange and white accents cutting through the upper. The Dolphins colorway was unmistakable, but it read as fashion before it read as football. The mesh construction gave the shoe an openness that fit Miami's pace: active, warm, built to move. Both pairs came with sewn-in memory foam footbeds — a first for a Fieg x ASICS collaboration — and shipped with multiple lace options and a custom sock set, each pair retailing at $145.
The release strategy was as considered as the product itself. Both colorways dropped first at a limited-time Kith pop-up in Miami on May 2, with two adjacent storefronts running split hours — the Miami side from 11am to 3pm, the New York side from 4pm to 8pm. Eight days later, the "New York City" colorway landed at Kith Manhattan, "Miami Beach" went to Kith Brooklyn, and both hit the webstore simultaneously at 11am EST on May 10. It was a rollout built around place and community, not just inventory.
What made the East Coast Project matter — and what makes these two Gel-Lyte IIIs still worth talking about — is that Fieg was doing something more than a colorway collaboration. He was establishing Kith as a vehicle for personal narrative at a time when the sneaker industry was still figuring out what that could look like. The shoes weren't just well-made; they were specific. They were about being from somewhere, caring about a team, splitting time between two cities with different energies and the same level of love. That kind of specificity doesn't age. The secondary market reflects it — both pairs remain sought after, proof that when a collaboration actually means something to the person making it, collectors feel it long after the drop.
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