Check those tangents, man. If you've ever used something like illustrator, imagine where the spline controls would be. Then try the same with the Nike. They're different.
I wouldn't pay $800 for those shoes because for me, $800 is a lot of money. If I were megarich and I needed sneakers maybe I'd pick the Balenciaga out of an appreciation for how they're pushing the edges of sneaker space. I'd be more likely to buy nice leather shoes because they'd suit me better.
The reason you can't tell the difference between that and a generic sneaker for middle-aged men is that you're used to the higher fashion brands using a separate set of cultural symbols as their baseline instead of looking at the design itself. We've gone past that. Rich people aren't wearing wingtips to show how rich they are anymore.
In fact, "formal" clothing and couture has long been a way to show you're on the way up, not that you're there. Old money doesn't try to keep up with fashion.
Rich people want to wear sneakers, t-shirts, jeans, hoodies, and all the other normal sportswear that everybody else now wears but they want it to be interesting instead of generic. That's a valid role for a fashion designer. Not addressing that market would be idiotic.
The reason it's easy to fake your way to the top of fashion week is actually that 90% of everything is shit, in every field and at every level, so there's no way to look at a given person's stuff and say definitively "nope, I can clearly tell you aren't successful by the way your clothing designs look". You might kick Michael Kors out by accident.