Cashmere Tees & $800 Sneaks: This Is A-TYPE, adidas' Made-In-Italy Luxury Label (EXCLUSIVE)
adidas A-TYPE is not a slightly elevated sportswear line masquerading as luxury. adidas A-TYPE is legitmately luxe, an all-new overtly premium adidas brand as indulgent as any of its prior top-tier collaborations.
In a release, adidas described A-TYPE as an "artisanal" line that updates archival Three Stripes shapes with "the most premium of fabrics, assembled by outstanding ateliers."
As an overt mission statement for A-TYPE, its concise debut collection comprises a capsule of signature adidas items, modeled in the lookbook by pals like Pusha T, Tyshawn Jones, and Paloma Elsesser.
adidas A-TYPE is adidas and then some, rebirthing trademark adidas styles through opulent craft. Its lodestar is adidas itself.
Hence why A-TYPE launches with the archetypal adidas goods: handmade adidas Superstar sneakers, silver jewelry, T-shirts, leather tracksuits, and Italian-made handbags to match.
Classic stuff made new through quality make. And even that's sorta underselling just how sumptuousness A-TYPE actually is.
We're talking the OG adidas Firebird tracksuit shaped by hand of the "finest leathers," trim athletic-ish T-shirts cut from cashmere, and Superstars cobbled in Italy — with real silver lace tips and cashmere laces! — that come packaged with wooden shoe trees and white gloves for delicate handling. Retail on those shoes? $800.
A-TYPE is so nice that it's wares won't even see general release, for now.
Because what is luxury without exclusivity?
For so long, adidas was the bridesmaid and never the bride. It'd collaborate with luxury labels as established as Prada, Gucci, and Balenciaga, turning out pricey product that infused classic adidas codes with its partners' stylistic leanings: Gucci-monogrammed Gazelles, gigantic Balenciaga jeans sidelined with adidas' three stripes.
But adidas itself never postured as a comparable vehicle for luxury.
That's recently begun to shift as the sportswear brand quietly pushed its in-house offerings closer to the upper-level oeuvre created by tentpole lines like Yohji Yamamoto-aligned Y-3 and Fear of God's adidas Athletics imprint.
Recently, subtly, adidas has issued oddball made-in-Italy shoes and handcrafted German shoes while its apparel enjoyed a patient material upgrade so low-key that few folks even noticed it.
This all felt like nice adidas stuff, maybe even premium adidas stuff. However, it was not necessarily luxury adidas stuff.
A-TYPE is luxury adidas stuff.
