Pharrell x adidas Samba Human Race 'Pink'
Colorway: Light Pink/Light Pink/Light Pink · Style code: IE7295 · Release date: May 6, 2023 · Price: $139 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Pharrell x adidas Samba Human Race 'Orange' (IE7293) · Pharrell x adidas Samba Human Race 'Terracotta' (IE7290) · Pharrell x adidas Samba Human Race 'Red' (IE7297) · Pharrell x adidas Samba Human Race 'White' (IF5124) · Adidas Samba Pharrell Humanrace Sneakers (IE7292)
Pharrell Williams has worked with adidas since 2014, and Human Race is the name that has followed that work since the NMD collection of 2016. Applying it to the Samba produced this: a leather upper in Light Pink across all three colour slots, with nothing breaking the tone, not the three stripes, not the toe overlay, not the sole. Single-colour treatments are a recurring device in his adidas output, and this silhouette's heavily seamed pattern gives a monochrome finish more to work with than a smooth shoe would.
The United States price was 200 dollars, double a general-release Samba OG that year, and the pair came out in 2023 within a wider run of Human Race colourways on the model. Pink is not a colour the Samba has visited often, and putting it on every panel at once is a long way from the football-heritage register the shoe usually occupies. That is the argument these releases make. The silhouette is so widely recognised that it survives any treatment, and stripping the contrast out entirely is a test of how much of its identity comes from shape rather than from colour.