Wales Bonner’s adidas Have Developed Expensive Taste

Wales Bonner’s adidas have always behaved better than ordinary trainers. This season, they have also developed expensive taste.

The Karintha arrives in dark brown croc-stamped leather with brushed gold eyelets. The Gazelle gets the same reptilian treatment in green. An off-white Adizero Adios trades its running mesh for suede and embroidered stripes, while the new BW Pony combines pony hair with lizard-stamped leather overlays.

These are familiar adidas shapes made strange through material. Grace Wales Bonner does not overload them with novelty; she changes their manners. A football shoe becomes almost formal. A running shoe looks handmade. The German Army Trainer acquires a coat.

The clothes follow the same logic. At the centre is a bark-brown leather blouson cut like a track jacket, with crochet stripes down the sleeves. Around it sit pinstriped track separates, a relaxed green tracksuit, collared football pieces and stirrup trousers: the wardrobe of someone who regards the changing room and the tailor as neighbouring departments.

Harley Weir’s campaign looks back to 1980s London, when subcultures and communities borrowed freely from one another. That reference matters because this collaboration has never worked by simply making adidas more luxurious. Its real strength is in treating sportswear as cultural dress: coded, researched and capable of elegance.

The Wales Bonner x adidas Originals Autumn/Winter 2026 collection is available globally from 29 October at adidas, Confirmed, Wales Bonner and selected retailers including Harrods.

The track jacket has gone to the tailor. The trainers have found the jewellery box.

Campaign images: adidas Originals, photographed by Harley Weir.