Adidas is giving its icons an upgrade.
On Monday, the sports brand introduced A-Type, a new line under its long-running lifestyle label, Originals, that reimagines classic Adidas items in premium fabrications. Pieces in the first collection include Adidas’ Firebird tracksuit, Sprinter shorts and Airliner bag reworked in leather and produced by European ateliers; cashmere T-shirts; and an upscale remake of its original Superstar sneaker, rendered in Italian leather and featuring cashmere laces with genuine silver lace tips.
Because no look is complete without accessories, A-Type is also offering jewellery, including earrings and a chain with its Trefoil logo cast in silver.
The brand’s archive has proved vital to its success over the past year as new chief executive Bjørn Gulden has steered the company out of its dire situation following the collapse of its Yeezy partnership. In 2024, Adidas’ full-year sales grew 12 percent in currency-neutral terms, according to preliminary results the company reported last month.
“There’s such a resurgence of our icons in Samba, Gazelle and Campus,” said Torben Schumacher, global general manager of Adidas Originals, referring to the brand’s popular lineup of retro sneakers. “We feel it’s a great time to tell the story about our most iconic products.”
Schumacher said the design team was freed from its usual constraints on matters like costs and told to come up with the most premium reimaginings of Adidas’ classics it could muster. Even the zipper pull on the Firebird tracksuit is now made of silver.
Prices are accordingly premium as well, running from $500 as high as $3,000. The Superstar sneaker, for instance, will cost about $800, while a full tracksuit would come in around $2,700.
A-Type offers Adidas a means of adding new dimension to its archival items, according to Schumacher. Last year, the company introduced denim versions of tracksuits with a similar intent that he said received a “phenomenal” response.
Adidas hasn’t yet decided exactly when or how it will launch the new products to the public. To start, it will only offer A-Type to what it calls “friends and family,” including partners such as rapper Pusha T, who also appears in a lookbook for the line shot by photographer Gabriel Moses and styled by Matthew Henson featuring figures from sports, fashion and entertainment such as model Paloma Elsesser and skateboarder Tyshawn Jones. The company wants to see what the reaction is like first and then will decide how to go to market with A-Type.
But it knows from its many partnerships that there’s demand for a more elevated Adidas product, according to Schumacher.
“[We] definitely believe that there is a customer,” he said.