Adidas Stan Smith J 'White Black'
Colorway: Footwear White/Core Black/Footwear White · Style code: BY9985 · Release date: July 14, 2018 · Price: $2682 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: adidas Originals Stan Smith (B24105) · adidas Originals Stan Smith (M20325) · adidas Originals Stan Smith (M20324) · Adidas Originals Stan Smith (LA6639) · Adidas Originals Stan Smith (JP9710)
Two colours do all the work on this pair. Footwear White covers the leather upper, the laces and the rubber cupsole, and Core Black takes the heel tab and the tongue markings, including the sketched portrait of Stan Smith that identifies the standard shoe. The three rows of perforations that stand in for adidas's Three Stripes stay white on white, so from the side it reads as an all-white court shoe until the black tab shows at the back. adidas released it on July 14, 2018, with a $120 list price.
This is the grade-school version of the shoe, sold in roughly kids' sizes 3.5 to 7, and it is built the same way as the adult pair: leather upper, padded heel tab, plain toe with no external branding, and a rubber cupsole. The design is older than the name on it; adidas was selling the shoe as the Robert Haillet by 1965 and renamed it for Stan Smith in 1978, and this kids' pair changes nothing structural. For a first court shoe the restraint is the point. White and black go with a school uniform as easily as with denim, and the smooth leather wipes clean, which matters more at this size than any colour story.