The latest shoe from Adidas Originals relies not on the appearance of the brand’s iconic three stripes, but rather another motif significant to the sportswear behemoth: the grid. Like many of its designs, the sneaker took cues from the brand’s archive, specifically a midsole webbing that first appeared on running shoes in the 1970s. The Deerupt, however, is far from a replica. “We looked at the strengths of the graphical quality of that net and reinterpreted it and applied it to a modern silhouettes,” says James Thompson, senior designer for Adidas Originals.
Employing the webbing on the shoe’s entirety allowed the design team to strip away embellishments to create a sneaker that is at once simple and distinct. “There are some things that are such a visual impact that it becomes almost the branding itself,“ says Oddbjorn Stavseng, senior director of global design. “The graphical quality of the grid is so intrinsically Adidas. Maybe not to everybody, but over time, people will grow to understand that.”
