Throughout 2016, the Consortium Tour has taken us around the globe. The Tour made monthly visits to the world’s industry leaders in retail for sneakers and asked them to collaborate with adidas, bringing their own stories and design concepts to a range of footwear models. After the success of the Consortium Tour, for 2017, adidas are going to develop this notion further and ask retailers to partner up and collaborate with one another on models, creating something new and wholly unique. Introducing “Sneaker Exchange”.
Collaboration is an evolving idea, adidas believe that partnership is not based on the calibre of the parties, nor simply the quality of the eventual product but on the information exchanged. Successful collaboration requires successful communication, working to overcome differences in geography, aesthetics or language to establish common ground and shared narratives. The results are top-level executions upon which all parties leave their firm mark with authenticity true to themselves, their new found partner and adidas.
These collaborations will present retailers with a new and interesting set of challenges unlike any previous Consortium project. Sneaker Exchange will push the boundaries in which ideas are shared, pull each partner from its safe space, push its sense of collaboration into new and exciting territory. We will see sportswear retailer’s work with fashion-oriented stores; women’s retailers collaborate with menswear shops.
Parisian store Colette, which has been one of Europe’s it store’s for design, art, culture and fashion for close to 18 years, have come together with Los Angeles UNDEFEATED, one of the most recognized brands in the world within sneaker community, for the first installment of the much anticipated ‘Sneaker Exchange.’ Both brands are renown for their approach to collaboration, inviting some of the most influential creatives in the world to co-create products, this time, with adidas at the core. In this first installment of adidas Consortium’s most ambitious collaboration series to date, we see influence from Paris and Los Angeles on the EQT Support and Campus 80.
The pack includes a Campus 80 and EQT. The Campus 80 has a white high-quality leather upper, an off white rubber sole with royal blue lacing and heel. The EQT support is the moodier, night time counterpart. The sole, too, is off-white but dark navy and deep blue shades dominate the model’s upper.
colette and UNDEFEATED deliver a collaboration at its best. Both parties share a common interest in footwear, they used their silhouettes as a templates and worked together to establish a common thematic ground for their executions. Two models, mirrored colorways, one clear and consistent theme – the adidas Consortium Sneaker Exchange kicks off in style in January 2017
The adidas Consortium Sneaker Exchange – colette x UNDEFEATED pack drops on January, 28th 2017 at Shelflife stores in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
