adidas City Series

One of the most well known and highly sort after packs within the sneaker world, the adidas City Series has paved its way in creating timeless classics.

adidas Orginals City Series box 2020

The City of Melbourne was the first place to have an adidas shoe named after it back in 1956. Although the shoe was a track spike, it was the start of a clever marketing idea that ending up continuing to the present day. What started off as an idea to name a shoe after the location of a major sporting event - such as 1960 Olympic Games bringing us the adidas Rom, and the 1962 World Cup which brought the adidas Chile and Santiago boots - became a series of endless possibilities. But this wasn’t the start!

adidas Originals 'Paris' (lush blue/lush red) 📸 - @hadoxfr

This idea changed over time and come the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games, adidas decided to create a german styled training shoe named after the birthplace of the modern Olympics, Athens. Now something that always made me wonder was the reasoning behind such similar designs for many of the models. This came down to the huge increase in the supply and demand of adi footwear. They decided to recycle the lasts of the Athens silhouette and replacing the names with different cities, adapting the colours to pay homage to the city they were named after, thus creating the well know ‘City Series’.

The City Series is often associated with the football casual scene of the 70s and 80s, but believe it or not were not the most commonly seen in the stands. Only a couple of retailers here only carried a few ‘City’ models and unless you visited the cities/places themselves, it would have been insanely difficult to secure them at that time.

adidas Originals 'Amsterdam' (dusrus/brown) 📸 - @aintfussed

This isn't an area that is covered in much depth, due to the fact that so much of its history is clouded. If you want to find out more about adidas and the long rich history they have, I would recommend looking at and purchasing the book - 'From PAST to PRESENT, a Timeline of the Stripes.' written by Neil Selvey, Dean Jacobs & Eddie Chang.

Photographers Featured:

Tom Silvester - @aintfussed

Erwan Demais - @hadoxfr