I don’t know the exact details behind the genesis of this project, but from what I understand adidas allowed a bunch of different retailers to offer up their own interpretations of a shoe from adidas’ ZX series. The shoes came out alphabetically for some reason (i.e. Q = Dave’s Quality Meats, R = Alife Rivington Club, etc.) and the last set of them just showed up at stores this past weekend.
The pictures of these have been around for a few weeks, but I feel like they are worth showing because of how excellent all of the shoes turned out. These are simple, interesting colorways and it’s impressive that stores that (presumably) have little to no experience designing shoes can come up with such compelling stuff. Is it worth the extra coin on the consumer’s end for a little co-branding? Sure, why not. Even though these companies won’t see much of the ultimate profit, I suppose adidas should be rewarded for picking companies/colorways that weren’t total shit.
Here’s some pics of the most recent pack.
Wood Wood
Dave’s Quality Meat
SneakersnStuff
Alife
Crooked Tongues
Styles VA
(This being one of the coolest shoes I’ve seen in the past several months. Nike Loopwheeler what?)
And now, just for a special little Monday treat, let’s run through some store/clothing brand collaborations that failed miserably. (And by “failed”, I mean “are ugly”. I don’t give a flying 747 fuck what they sell for on eBay.) Now remember, the “badness” (and that’s bad meaning bad, not bad meaning good) of each of these is purely my opinion. So, if you disagree…keep it to yourself so you don’t look like an idiot.
(Try as I might, I was unable to find any particularly egregious adidas collabos. And I did try. As far as I’m concerned, their collaborations bat with a pretty high average. Something Nike should look into: not greenlighting every single fucking “Nike x ______” that they come across. Give the interesting collabos to people that actually deserve them. Like JGoods, for example.)
Nike Dunk x Undefeated. I’ll be the first to say that Undefeated has come out with some great shoes under the Nike banner, but goddamn…these are fucking disgusting. The “throw some random colors together” concept (always a risky move) failed here. Failed very, very badly.
Jordan I x Levi’s. There’s nothing that says “Air Jordan” to me like some…Levi’s denim(?)
Nike AM1 x Kid Robot. The always classic hot pink, bright orange, metallic gold colorway. There’s no way Swizz Beatz saw these and signed off on them…is there?
Nike x Liberty Fabric. Now I realize these are for women…but would women even like these? They look like something Olivia Newton-John would have worn in the “Let’s Get Physical” music video. Ugh. Although, for that special brand of dude that likes buying Nike women’s shoes (go to www.niketalk.com and click “Nike Retro”), these would have gone great with a circa 2005-2006 Leroy Jenkins all over print hoodie. Think about it.
Reebok x Monopoly (or Parker Bros., more likely). These are actually awesome, and I didn’t know they existed until about 20 minutes ago. The concept of combining shoes with board games just about caused my mind grapes to explode. SO. MANY. POSSIBILITIES. You could design a Dunk Low to look like a Hungry Hungry Hippo. You could do a Nike Terminator with the big “N I K E” on the back made out of Scrabble pieces (with their respective point scores!). You could sell a giant pack of solid colored Dunks in an oversize Trivial Pursuit game piece. The possibilities are endless. Nike: if Reebok has Parker Bros. locked up, get on the phone with Milton Bradley ASAP.
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