adidas Wales Bonner x adidas Samba 'Black Green'
Colorway: Core Black/Cream White/Green · Style code: S42590 · Release date: March 26, 2021 · Price: $327 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Adidas Wales Bonner Sailor Jacket (JM8217) · Adidas Wales Bonner Quilted Jacket (KE9956SHAMAR) · Wales Bonner x adidas Samba 'Black' (FX7517) · Wales Bonner x adidas Samba 'Scarlet' (GY6612) · Adidas x Wales Bonner Shorts 'White' (KR8773)
This was the second wave. Grace Wales Bonner's adidas partnership opened in November 2020 with a black Samba and a cream and brown one; four months later she returned with two leather makes that added a colour to the vocabulary. adidas lists this one as Core Black, Cream White and Green, so the black base of the opening release stays put, with green doing the work brown had done before. The construction is unchanged, which has been the constant across every version she has produced.
It released on 26 March 2021 at 180 dollars in the United States, the same figure as the debut and the same as the navy and yellow pair that came out beside it. Green, cream and black carries a specific weight in football, and the designer works with adidas on kits for the Jamaican Football Federation, so the palette is not arriving from nowhere. What is easy to forget about this release is its context. In March 2021 the Samba was not yet a shoe people queued for. These sold on the strength of the designer's name rather than the silhouette, and the reversal of that relationship over the next two years is one of the stranger turns in the model's history.