More than 100 years ago the brothers Adolf ("Adi") and Rudolf Dassler made their first pair of sports shoes. Hundreds of groundbreaking designs, epic moments, and star-studded collabs later, this book presents avisual review of the adidas shoethrough almost 200 models.To further develop and tailor his products to athletes specific needs, Dassler asked them to return their worn footwear when no longer needed, with all the shoes eventually ending up in his attic (to this day, many athletes return their shoes to adidas, often as a thank you after winning a title or breaking a world record). This collection now makes upthe "adidas archive", one of the largest, if notthe largest archive of any sports goods manufacturer in the worldwhich photographersChristian HabermeierandSebastian Jägerhave been visually documenting in extreme detail for years.Shot using the highest reproduction techniques, these images reveal the fine details as much as the stains, the tears, the repair tape, the grass smudges, the faded autographs.It s all here, unmanipulatedand captured inextremely high resolutionand with it comes to lightthe personal stories of each individual wearer. We encounter the shoes worn by West Germany s football team during its miraculous 1954 World Cup win and those worn by Kathrine Switzer when she ran the Boston Marathon in 1967, before women were officially allowed to compete;custom modelsfor stars fromMadonnatoLionel Messi; collabs with the likes ofPharrell Williams,Raf Simons,Stella McCartneyorYohji Yamamoto; as well as the brand strailblazing techniques and materials.Accompanied by expert texts,each picture tells us the why and the how, but also conveys the driving force behind adidas. What we discover goes beyond mere design; in the end, these are just shoes, worn out by their users who have loved them but they are alsofirst-hand witnesses of our sports, design, and culture history, from the beginnings of the Dassler brothers and the founding of adidas until today.
