adidas Originals NMD Shoes

Laundry room today. Tomorrow, the world.

At its core, adidas has always been an innovator. A quality it no doubt adopted from its founding father, Adi Dassler. In 1924, he set out with a dream of providing athletes with the best possible equipment to help them thrive in their given sports. Olympic Gold medalists like Lina Radke and Jesse Owens wore his shoes and represented his first major achievements. He started off in a small town in Bavaria, Germany making shoes in his mother’s laundry room. It just so happens that laundry room would be his launching pad to reach the world.

Three Stripes the Charm

There’s a certain magic to the number three. There’s three bases before you make it home in baseball. Perhaps one of your favorite movie series is a trilogy. Even Genies are supposed to grant you three wishes. But, since no one is carrying their adidas shoes around rubbing them like some mystical lamp, what makes the classic three stripes so magical? The answer is simplicity. Dassler put stripes to begin with to merely bind the shoe together after construction. Something that started out as a fundamental necessity to making the shoe, became the thing that would one day define it. Today, the classic three stripes stand as one of retail’s most recognizable and prestigious symbols, proving adidas to be the embodiment of the notion that less truly is more.

Designed to “Dassle”

adidas is a minimalist at heart. The brand has not only gotten by, but it’s flourished under the strategy of not making things too complicated, especially with its shoe designs. When Dassler started the company, his main goal was functionality. By no means did he consider himself a fashion guru. However, his simplistic approach to design due to his strict focus on performance, laid the foundation for adidas’ straightforward, yet charming and appealing sense of style.

Dassler’s finger print is even evident in some of today’s recent designs like the NMD R1, adidas NMD R2, and adidas Prime Knit. The shoes stay true to Dassler’s passion for performance in their incredibly responsive nature, flexible material that adapts to your foot, and their quality traction for grip and stability while in motion. The NMD R1 has an ‘80s running inspired look with its mesh upper and foot-hugging fit. The Prime Knit has a similar look but has more of a stretchy embroidery around the ankle for an even closer fit while the NMD R2 has a more tightly knit upper for a look better suited for everyday modern streetwear.

Despite adidas growing and continually branching out into new territories, it has never strayed too far from its roots. The fact that its iconic three stripes has been on every adaptation of adidas in some shape or form makes that clear. So it’s safe to say that whether it’s in performance or style, the goal of everything adidas has done since the beginning, is to “Dassle.”