Wales Bonner x adidas Samba 'Silver Metallic'
Colorway: Silver Metallic/Cream White/Grey One · Style code: IG8181 · Release date: June 9, 2023 · Price: $458 · 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)
Patent leather is a strange thing to put on a football trainer, and that is precisely the point of this release. adidas lists the colours as Silver Metallic, Cream White and Grey One, and the high-gloss finish throws light in a way nothing else in the Samba catalogue manages. Grace Wales Bonner's method has been to leave the shoe's pattern alone and change what covers it, and a metallic patent upper is the most extreme version of that approach she had attempted up to this point.
It released on 9 June 2023 at 200 dollars in the United States, a step up from the 160 and 180 dollar suede and leather pairs the partnership had been producing, and five months ahead of the hair-on pony run that pushed the materials further again. Silver also does something the collaboration's earlier colours could not. It removes the shoe from its own history. A cream or green Samba still looks like a terrace shoe, while a silver one does not look like anything the model has ever been, which is a useful trick for a designer who has deliberately refused to redraw the silhouette.