With British football culture as inspiration, adidas Spezial looks back to the brand’s archives, now with an outdoor twist.
adidas Spezial has established a unique brand identity over the course of a lengthy history of collections, which is based on two poles that are not mutually exclusive. One pillar is the love for the product that the collection’s creator, Gary Aspden, a meticulous company historian, has for it. The other is that Spezial was founded on the notion of recovering adidas’s cultural narrative as a pivotal element in the growth of British music and football subcultures.
Every season, adidas Spezial introduces new stories and products that celebrate the adidas brand. This season it does so with an extensive footwear collection. adidas Lawkholme SPZL is a design exercise in which he strips the classic running shoe of its three stripes, but he does not stop there; he continues to remove pieces to reduce it to a silhouette with only the essentials.
The adidas Samba Deco SPZL follows a similar path, though the starting point in this case was already a model with the essentials. The SPZL version does away with the T-shaped toe cap, a subtle change that keeps the essence of the shoe. To make matters even more complicated, this season’s two editions not only have different colorways, but they also have different tongue materials and details.
The adidas Moscrop 2 SPZL is based on the adidas Raider and its rugged and trekking reminiscent styling is perfect for pairing with the rest of the SPZL collection. The adidas Inverness SPZL is inspired by classic hiking shoes and brown shoes, updated with a bold two-tier eyelet construction. The adidas Hieaven SPZL is the perfect winter shoe, built on the LA Trainer sole and with a protective adi-Tex lining.
The adidas Englewood SPZL takes obvious references from the likes of the Continental 80 and Powerphase and tries to emulate the style popularised by the adidas Campus. To complete the collection, adidas SPZL presents T-shirts, sweatshirts, trousers and jackets that avoid references to a specific style.
Football, more as a culture than as a sport, unites SPZL’s garments in a common narrative through which subcultures and music in the UK, key to the evolution of contemporary trends, pass.
The new adidas SPEZIAL collection available now at FOOTDISTRICT.