This Italian Performance Brand Wants Your Next Daily Runner to Be Made Out of Natural Fibers

While many running shoes today boast a sock-like upper, a new daily runner from the Italian performance brand UYN (pronounced “win” and short for “Unleash Your Nature”) features an upper that is quite literally a sock.

The UYN Alacrify is built out from a sock knitted in Italy with 100 percent natural fiber derived from eucalyptus trees. It’s not a portion of a sock but a fully formed article that wraps around the entirety of your foot.

A second layer is targeted at the sides, toe and heel to balance breathability and support, and there are no additional components necessary for the lacing system, which is integrated directly into the knit. Attached to the bottom of this sock upper then comes massive dual-density midsole with a plate taking on an odd shape with half of it looking like half of forceps.

Having launched in early August, Alacrify isn’t the first running shoe from UYN, which is better known for its base layers and introduced its first runners in 2024. It is, however, a major step forward for the Italian label seeking to create a name in running footwear and expand its presence in the United States.

“The Alacrify is a combination of the first couple of running shoes and finding what worked best,” Teri Ferguson Roth, North America sales director for UYN, told Footwear News in a video call Friday. “This, to us, is our first real running shoe we feel like we can go to market with and feel confident about. And we’re excited to see where it goes.”

UYN was founded in 2018 by Trerè Innovation, a company that started 65 years ago by making, appropriately, socks. Its mission is to make performance gear out of natural materials, which has led to it becoming the official outfitter of 10 national ski teams, many of which are among the sport’s powerhouses, including Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Italy and Slovenia.

A cycling shoe marked UYN’s entry into footwear in 2021, and its slate now includes models for everyday wear and hiking, as well barefoot styles.

The starting point in developing the the Alacrify came after it had identified a lack of models designed to handle uneven surfaces in street running. Cement and asphalt are perfectly flat long, so UYN worked with the University of Verona to develop stabilizing technology while using a treadmill that can slant in all directions while a runner is on it.

Out of this came a midsole made up of two different densities of EVA foam. A softer Propulsyon Foam forms the forefoot and thins out as it reaches the heel, where a greater area is taken up by a more firm and stable composition called Freebound.

Visible differences in texture tip off the two distinct foams, and also partly visible from the exterior is the HALO System, a plate that’s solid at the forefoot and hallowed at the heel as it wraps around the edges like forceps, once again offering a combination of propulsion and stability, as well as impact absorption. It isn’t made of carbon fiber like you’d find in a super shoe, but rather a more flexible TPU that makes it better suited to a wider range of runners.

On the TPU outsole you’ll find patterns two sources of inspiration from the animal kingdom. The heel is shaped like the hoof of a horse, nature’s most stable climber, and the forefoot like the horn of an ibex, nature’s best climber overall.

Nature’s greatest contribution to the Alacrify, though, is in the eucalyptus knit upper. Pulp from the tree is turned into a natural technical fiber brimming with features including temperature regulation, moisture wicking, durability and antimicrobial properties. A lack of seams gets rid of potential spots that could irritate the foot, and the lack of cutting and sewing also eliminates waste.

And because the upper is a sock rather than merely sock-like, you can even wear the Alacrify without another pair of socks on your feet. Directly beneath your feet, you’ll feel an insole made out of hemp for a little extra cushioning.

“One of our mottos is ‘the comfort of the socks, the performance of the shoes,’” Alacrify design lead Elia Redini said. “So it’s for people who don’t want to have their feet squished, they want to have a lot of freedom and a lot of air.”

As of publishing, the UYN website and Boston store are the only places where the Alacrify can be purchased (for $179) in the US.. Discussions are in place to get the shoe into specialty retail stores, and the brand also wants to lean into opportunities for runners to try the shoes themselves.

During the Chicago Collective trade show, UYN hosted a run with Heartbreak Running Club and was pleased with the feedback it received on the Alacrify. Should the Italian label show at The Running Event in November, on which a decision hasn’t been made, Ferguson Roth raised the possibility of hosting demonstrations with the rocketing treadmill that it used during development.

UYN is already being forthright on an Alacrify 2.0 coming in 2026, suggesting a yearly iteration could progress even further into the future.

For now, it’s still early days on UYN footwear, which leaves open a tremendous amount of opportunities in its mission for nature-derived performance.