Adidas JS Letters Gold
Colorway: Black / Goldmt · Style code: M18990 · Release date: December 2014 · Price: $2463 · Availability: Available now
Jeremy Scott's relationship with adidas is one of the longest a fashion designer has held with a sportswear company. It opened in 2002 with a project built around hand-finished Forum sneakers covered in money motifs, and formalised in 2008 when adidas Originals launched footwear and apparel under his name. That same year produced the design most people picture first: a high-top with fabric wings attached at the ankle, which rappers including Lil Wayne carried well beyond the fashion audience it was made for.
What followed leaned into the same instinct for literal ideas. There were sneakers with teddy-bear heads on the tongue, a 2012 model hung with plastic handcuffs, and a 2013 return to the money print of the very first collection. adidas has kept Scott close throughout, using him in advertising as early as 2001 and again as a face of its Originals campaigns in 2012.
The Letters belongs to that catalogue. Rather than attach something to the shoe, it makes the upper itself the graphic, running raised block characters that spell the brand's name across a high-cut black panel with metallic gold on the trim and sole edge. It is ornament by typography rather than by appendage.