Buchi Kids

“People are not buying Sambas to play soccer. They’re not buying Stan Smiths to play tennis,” Omondi explains further. “They’re wearing them for the heritage. The shoe is part of the fashion zeitgeist because of the lifestyle and culture it represents.” The trainer with trend potential has evolved vastly since its original form, and new collaborations and colorways featuring the Samba and other three-stripe classics continue to add layers to a story that extends far beyond style.

These are the Adidas sneaker collaborations to shop now.

British-Jamaican menswear designer Grace Wales Bonner has designed several iterations of highly covetable Adidas collaborations. Seen on cool kids from East Hollywood to the Lower East Side, Adidas Originals by Wales Bonner offers vibrant colorways and reflects research on the music and photography of Burkina Faso in West Africa during the 1970s and ’80s.

The Italian fashion house’s jewel-toned versions of the Gazelles, an Adidas Originals style, draw inspiration from Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele’s memories of the 1980s and ’90s and champion the signature three-stripe style.

The New York–based brand Noah celebrates Adidas’s beloved styles of the 1980s and ’90s with several three-stripe iterations, including a Vintage Runner Sneaker, in retro colorways.

Adidas and Ivy Park released a new style, Super Sleek, which is a modern take on the Samba style and features a platform sole and the iconic three-stripe marking.

American professional skateboarder Dennis Busenitz has collaborated with Adidas to create flat, three-stripe styles that can work equally for skating or as a lifestyle shoe.

Khaite teamed up with Adidas to design a monochromatic suede version of the German brand’s Country O.G. style, which is a reinvention of the original 1970s runner.

British menswear designer Craig Green created a futuristic shoe in four colorways—orange, green, blue, and gray—as part of the Adidas Originals collection.

Japanese fashion label Human Made, founded by archivist and producer Nigo, teamed up with Adidas to recreate three classic styles: Stan Smiths, Campus, and Rivalry Low.

Fashion house Stella McCartney and Adidas have partnered to create fashion-forward iterations of Originals for more than 10 years. In this version, the brands offer low-top twill sneakers that incorporate classic elements of Adidas athletic silhouettes.

Adidas and Prada—two fashion houses with extensive heritage—came together to present their very own sneaker model: the A+P Luna Rossa. The simple colorways were designed to pay homage to each brand’s history of creating lasting styles in subtle colorways.

As fashion history tells us, the Samba shoe was introduced to the world in 1949. The objective? To allow football players to train on icy earth. Not too much has changed in the shoe’s design; back then there were still three stripes and a trefoil logo on the shoe’s tongue. Why mess with a masterpiece?