Adidas Adicolor Hi R2
Colorway: Colored/Wht/Colored · Style code: 562881 · Price: $1864 · Availability: Available now
Seven colours, seven creative teams, seven short films: the relaunched Adicolor line was organised as a set rather than as a run of separate releases, with each colour group handed to different artists and licence holders and each shoe named for its series and its position within it. This is a high top from one of those groups, built on a multi-coloured upper with white through the stripes and sole. The underlying concept dates to 1983, when adidas first sold plain white trainers packaged with marker pens and told buyers to decorate them; the relaunch kept a customisable White Series alongside the artist-made colour groups, complete with pens, badges and spare laces. What makes the programme interesting in hindsight is its scale. Rather than one collaboration at a time, adidas commissioned an entire colour system and let outside designers fill it, a structure the industry has spent the two decades since rebuilding piece by piece.