JJJJound, the Montreal Mood Board That Became a Label

In January 2016 Justin Saunders posted three pictures to his site. A Victory Sportswear trainer, a Vans Style 36 LX and a New Balance 990v3. There was no caption on any of them, because there never was. Looking back years later, Sneaker Freaker read those three posts as a preview of JJJJound's first three sneaker collaborations.

That is how JJJJound works. Saunders shows you what he likes for a long time, and eventually some of it comes back with his name on the box.

Pictures with no words

Saunders, a Montrealer, started the site in 2006 as a personal mood board. He posted images without comment, and by 2008 the text was gone entirely. What remained was a scroll of what he called moods. Vintage cars, film stills, tan interiors, models. No explanations, no prices, no links to buy.

It sounds like nothing. It turned out to be a very precise tool. In an internet built on hype and captions, a page that only showed things, and showed them in a consistent register of muted color and good proportion, read like a point of view. Virgil Abloh was an early admirer of the blog, and Saunders moved in the same circle as Abloh, Heron Preston and Matthew M. Williams around the Been Trill years. He also worked as a consultant for The New York Times' T Magazine. In a 2016 interview with Surface, Kanye West described checking his own ideas against whether they would pass as JJJJound approved. For a blog with no words, that was a lot of influence.

From tote bag to studio

The first physical product came in 2013, and it was a tote bag. That fits. The early shop sold the kind of goods a mood board would recommend, mugs, socks, beanies and totes, plain and well made, and they tended to sell out. Logo hoodies made with Victory Sportswear went the same way.

Over the years JJJJound grew into a design studio in Montreal, making its own line of minimal basics and working with outside partners. It never moved to New York or Paris, and it never needed to.

The collaborations

The sneaker work is where most people meet the brand, and it tends to follow a pattern. Take a shoe people already love, mute the color, and keep the branding quiet.

Vans came early. Hypebeast flagged the project in April 2017, three Old Skool colorways in green, brown and grey, each with white stitching, laces and foxing. The shape is the one traced in our Vans Old Skool history. The New Balance run began in 2018 with a tonal 990v3, and in 2020 JJJJound released the 992 in grey and in green. Both colors went fast. It belongs to the same family covered in our New Balance 990 history.

Reebok got the treatment with the Club C 85 and the Classic Nylon. Then came Asics. JJJJound took on the Gel-Kayano 14 in 2022, a late-2000s running shoe that suits the muted treatment, and the two have also done a GT-2160. The model's comeback is its own story, told in our Asics Gel-Kayano 14 piece, and in June 2025 the Kayano 14 came back for what Hypebeast counted as the pair's third sneaker together, in White/Midnight and White/Black/Blue. Danner boots, A.P.C. and Bape Stas have all been on the list too.

The secondary market noticed. In an October 2020 piece, StockX reported that the 2018 990v3 was reselling for more than $2,000 on its site and that each of the ten JJJJound sneakers it listed was going for more than 120 percent of retail. Sneaker Freaker keeps a running history of the footwear projects for anyone tracking every pair.

Why taste became the product

Most collaborations add something. A logo, a print, a story about a city. JJJJound mostly takes things away, and it is better at it than almost anyone. The appeal is that you are buying the editor's eye, the confirmation that this exact shoe, in this exact grey, is the right one. It is closer to Dieter Rams than to the Supreme drop model, even when the release sells out just as fast.

The risk in that approach is obvious. Strip away too much and a collaboration becomes a general release in a nicer color, with only the resale price to tell you otherwise. JJJJound gets away with it because the choices hold together, release after release, the same way the blog held together post after post. You can spot a pair across a room without looking for the logo.

That is also why it matters past sneakers. JJJJound showed that selection, done in public for years, could be a brand in its own right. Plenty of labels can copy the grey. Fewer can copy the years of looking that picked it.

For more on how collaborations shaped the current market, see our collaborations and streetwear hubs, or browse the culture section.

Three pictures in January 2016, no words attached. By the end of 2018 there were JJJJound Vans and a JJJJound 990v3. Nobody needed a caption.