Even if the collaborator is Pharrell, who has been influencing how many of us dress and approach fashion for twice as long, a 10-year association with a business is no minor accomplishment. Therefore, it is commendable that Pharrell, in the ninth year of their collaboration, continues to find methods to improve the projects he delivers with Adidas.
“I believe he is simply learning. He never truly looks back, according to Edward Robinson, chief creative officer at Humanrace. “The person is continually progressing, and I believe that every project he works on merely helps him build his expertise and reference library. It won’t stop, in my opinion.
Pharrell’s collaborative relationship with Adidas kicked off in 2014 and has spawned everything from 50-colorway collections of Superstars to original silhouettes like the NMD Hu and Hu NMD S1 Ryat boot that have been met with varying degrees of interest in the marketplace. For his latest project, Pharrell reimagines another classic silhouette from the Adidas archive with a six-pack of Sambas.
Beginning in 2014, Pharrell and Adidas began working together to create a variety of products, from 50-colorway Superstar collections to unique shapes like the NMD Hu and Hu NMD S1 Ryat boot that have received different levels of consumer interest. For his most recent endeavor, Pharrell combined a six-pack of Sambas with another timeless Adidas archival silhouette.
“It’s elevated, but that should just be what we do to an object if we work on it,” asserts Robinson. “The goal of a cooperation is to do something collectively that you couldn’t have done alone. The last touch that most embodies the sense of material and craft, in my opinion, were the leather laces. We were particularly concerned with the details, getting the stripes and leather thickness just perfect.
The pack’s six monochromatic colorways—yellow, orange, pink, lilac, red, and green—represent Humanrace’s regular color scheme while also emphasizing smaller elements like the stitching on the Three Stripes.
“The Samba is a style that has been tried and true. At Something in the Water, Pharrell said, “I just wanted to concentrate on the workmanship and see where we could enhance it. “The colors actually really play a dual duty in communicating our direction for our product line color cards, but they also make it a lot simpler for you to appreciate the various nuances like the stitching on the stripes, you know? That is simply unique. You won’t find that anywhere. But if it hadn’t been tonal, you wouldn’t have seen that.