“They look great with shorts, they look great with pants. “I never lost affection for just how it looks,” Hill said. “I would wear them from when I was super into soccer when I was nine or 10, and then through skateboarding.” Hill, who in the past few years has served as a style avatar for young men dipping their toes into menswear, found that the Samba fit neatly into his new tasteful sensibility. “I’ve worn since probably I was 11 or something-it's always been my favorite shoe,” he told GQ at the time. One of those people was Jonah Hill, who designed his own pair of Sambas for Adidas in 2020. It’s more of a rekindling than a reaction,” Bradley says. They’d be like, Oh, I forgot, I used to have a pair of those for soccer practice. “The thing about wearing the shoe, especially when it’s not on trend, is people remember it. Over the years, he realized that the understated Samba evoked a particularly strong-even emotional-response in other people. “It’s Bob Marley-ish for me,” says Bradley, who has had a pair or two in his footwear rotation since 2004. Fashion stylist Ian Bradley initially recognized the sneaker’s roots in Jamaica’s football-obsessed reggae scene. The new generation of Samba fans have been drawn to this deep well of nostalgia. Perhaps most strikingly, they provided a rare moment of consensus: we all agreed, more or less, on what a cool shoe looked like. In those early summer days, the Samba looked as part of the city’s urban fabric as the Nike Air Force 1. By then, I was seeing Sambas everywhere: on the feet of tourists in Soho, who wear them instead of hefty walking shoes, but also on bankers in Midtown, who have seemingly moved on from Allbirds. We all work in the fashion world, or close to it-but in this case it felt like we were actually late to the party. ![]() Earlier this summer, when I met up with a half dozen friends at a downtown NYC bar after work, I counted four sets of Sambas under the table, including my own beat-up white pair, which I bought for about $75 last year. In a men’s fashion landscape riven by flash-in-the-pan microtrends and TikTok-engineered memes, the Samba trend is pleasantly real and surprisingly universal. Which made it particularly surprising that this summer belonged to an unassuming mass market sneaker developed over 70 years ago: the Adidas Samba. ![]() The ruthless logic of hype dictates that the harder a sneaker is to get, the more desirable it is. If you prefer to maintain a $100-or-less budget, fret not-there are still plenty of Sambas to go around.In the sneaker world, popularity is often directly correlated with newness and rarity. (The fun part about that, however, is that you might find past-season colorways you didn’t know you needed). You’ll likely find a pair on resale sites like Stockx, Kicks Crew, and GOAT, just at a higher-than-retail price. Since then, the shoe has evolved into what we now know as the Adidas Samba OG.Īs with most trending items that center the Venn diagram of comfort, affordability, and style (with bonus points for being celebrity-approved), the Adidas Samba has reached cult status-which also means it’s sold out nearly everywhere. One year later, the brand officially dubbed the sneaker the Samba, timed to the 1950 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Adidas originally designed the shoe as a men’s soccer sneaker with gum soles for hard surfaces and icy conditions. Like most iconic fashion pieces, the Adidas Samba comes with a history, dating back to 1949. Plus, Sambas are notoriously comfortable and typically retail for $100 or less, appealing to the masses.Īrnold Jerocki The History of Adidas Sambas A collaborative runway debut in 2020 with British menswear designer Grace Wales Bonner reignited this historical shoe which later graced the feet of Bella Hadid, Jennie Kim, Hailey Bieber, Kendall Jenner, Harry Styles, and Frank Ocean, among many others. ![]() ![]() So, why are the Adidas Sambas so popular? The two C’s to success: celebrity endorsements and collaborations. Yes, there are the Nike AF1s, the New Balance 990s and 550s, and Adidas top seller, the Stan Smiths, but few sneakers have been comparable to the footprint these low-profile gummy kicks made on the world (no pun intended). (You can thank TikTok, Instagram, and resale sites like StockX, GOAT, and eBay for that.) And one of the most undeniably popular styles in history that continues to reign supreme is the Adidas Samba. What once was a subculture reserved for in-the-know hype kids has turned into a global, mainstream phenomenon. Sneaker culture has hit an all-time high.
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