BAPE x adidas Samba 'Winning Collection'
Colorway: Scarlet/Footwear White/Footwear White · Style code: F36707 · Release date: May 30, 2018 · Price: $206 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: BAPE x adidas Samba 'World Cup' (KJ8852) · BAPE x adidas Samba 'White Black Gum' (JR9245) · BAPE x adidas Samba 'Black White Gum' (JR9246)
Scarlet suede against Footwear White is the whole of this Samba's colour brief, and it is far more direct than most collaborations on the model manage. A Bathing Ape, founded by Nigo in Tokyo's Ura-Harajuku district in 1993, built its reputation on saturated colour and heavy branding, and this pair fits that record exactly: a red shoe, a white contrast, and none of the tonal restraint that would come to define the model's later fashion partnerships.
The release came on 30 May 2018 at 170 dollars in the United States, part of a run the two names grouped under the Winning Collection banner. That year they were working across several silhouettes at once, and the Samba was a slightly odd inclusion, since the football trainer had none of the technical drama of the running and basketball shoes such projects usually reach for. In hindsight the choice reads better than it did at the time. This pair arrived several years before the model's mainstream surge, which puts it on the short list of high-profile versions produced while the Samba was still a quiet catalogue seller.