Once adidas' Most Ubiquitous Sneaker, the Superstar Is Reborn as Its Most Luxurious
Even, what, three years into its run, the adidas Samba remains king. Even as adidas' other sporty, flat-soled sneakers begin to take off, the culture keeps circling back to the singular soccer shoe that fueled the sportswear giant's impressive current run.
However, as adidas retools its lifestyle offerings with some surprisingly sumptuous stuff, its focus shifts to another classic sneaker.
The adidas Superstar is back. It never left but, still, it's back. And it's more luxurious than ever before.
There's been much Superstar luxuriating as of late. This is due in part to a quiet shift that adidas has taken towards high-end fare. Its bread and butter will never not be affordable sportswear, but much of its recent newness is impressively plush (hello, $500 running shoes).
But the face of adidas' bold new direction is an old friend. Suddenly, the Superstar is super nice.
In February, adidas launched A-TYPE, a new luxury label that turns Three Stripes icons into pure opulence. Think sporty cashmere tees and tracksuits made in Italy of primo leather. But what shoes to anchor it all? Well, given the Samba's extreme ongoing popularity, you may think adidas would give the people's shoe an upscale upgrade.
Instead, the first adidas A-TYPE sneaker is an $800 Superstar made of lush leather and fastened with silver-tipped cashmere laces.
This is by far the highest-end Superstar in recent memory. However, it's hardly the only one of its kind.
Recently, Edison Chen's CLOT turned the Superstar into $470 heeled shoes made of glossy Italian leather while Wales Bonner, master of the Samba, remixed the Superstar with croc-embossed calf leather. Shoe Palace recently debuted a semi-gilded Superstar in honor of adidas-endorsed NBA star Damian Lillard.
And curatorial Canadian company JJJJound issued adidas Superstar shoes that looked ordinary but were actually handmade in Germany.
Truly, the Superstar is in its quiet luxury bag. And adidas has infused the indulgent leanings of its latest collaborations into luxe Superstars of its own making.
Consider its in-house croc-stamped Superstars and the other recent round of "Made in Germany" Superstars, produced to the same standard as that JJJJound collab (just hold the JJJJound).
Other models are perhaps a tad less reiterative. What of last year's dress shoe-flavored brown leather Superstars? Or the tasty "snakeskin" models that adidas produced to tie in with the Year of the Snake (after all, footwear companies tend to take priority models for these kinds of tentpole moments)?
The message is clear: Luxurious Superstars are not solely the vision of adidas' designer partners. They're a priority for adidas as a whole.
By virtue of it being the OG adidas cross-cultural hit — ahem, Run D.M.C. — the adidas Superstar is a worthy fit for this new era of higher-end offerings. It's a timeless classic and, as such, provides a solid foundation as adidas feels out its next steps. But it also has its own maison-adjacent pedigree.
In 2019, adidas' Prada collaboration birthed an Italian-crafted Prada x adidas Superstar that's arguably one of the greatest adidas team-ups ever, a perfect blend of adidas' streetwear legacy and Prada's overt quality.
And in 2023, the last time that adidas was overtly pushing the Superstar, it began rolling out more well-named Superstar Lux shoes, highlighting the sneaker as a canvas finer materials.
Will the newly luxurious Superstar dethrone the Samba as the de facto adidas sneaker? That might be a stretch. But as a higher end adidas sneaker, the Superstar is without peer.