Wales Bonner x adidas Samba OG 'Croc - Night Brown'
Colorway: Supplier Color/Wonder White/Night Brown · Style code: JH9826 · Release date: October 24, 2024 · Price: $182 · 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)
Embossing is doing the work here. The upper is leather pressed with a crocodile pattern, a finish that changes how light sits across the panels without altering a single line of the shoe, and adidas records the colours as a supplier-specified shade with Wonder White and Night Brown. Set against the suede and smooth leather carrying most of the Wales Bonner Sambas, it is the most overtly luxurious material the partnership had used on the silhouette outside the hair-on pony run.
It released on 24 October 2024 at 300 dollars in the United States, roughly triple a general-release Samba OG that year and well above the 160 to 200 dollars the collaboration charged for its suede pairs. That figure tracks the arc of the whole project. Grace Wales Bonner began working with adidas in 2020 on a shoe priced at 180 dollars, and four years later demand was strong enough that a 300 dollar Samba was a reasonable commercial proposition. The brown and white scheme is deliberately restrained for the money, which is consistent with how she has handled the model throughout: the expense goes into the hide, not into anything an onlooker registers from across a room.