adidas’ most influential shoe is one hardly anybody has heard of. And those who do know about the BW Army, an uncomplicated sneaker originally designed for German military training, associate it with Maison Margiela, whose high-fashion replica of the shoe has become a luxury sneaker mainstay.

What is a German sportswear giant to do?

In the last couple of years, adidas has sought to reclaim the narrative by refocusing attention on this underrated and highly imitated banger that was gathering dust in the archives. The adidas BW Army is finally having its day in the sun, and the results are as elegant as Margiela's signature GAT shoe at a fraction of the price.

Newest of all is a link-up with retail giant UNITED ARROWS, which is responsible for everything from truly elegant Timberlands to turning Under Armour into Japanese streetwear. The BW Army is not only in safe hands but it's looking more luxurious than ever.

The UNITED ARROWS-exclusive sneaker ditches pebbled leather in favour of black suede that covers the entire upper. It’s near-impossible to identify the shoe as an adidas, due to the lack of three stripes but also because of the grainy photography that looks more like a high-fashion editorial that shows a besuited man stepping out of a vintage racecar.

It’d be hard to make any other $150 adidas sneaker look truly high-end by simply dressing it in suede and shooting a few nice pics. But that’s the thing with the BW Army, it hardly looks like an adidas, and UNITED ARROWS’ minimal interventions only reaffirm the luxuriousness of the Samba’s predecessor. 

The BW Army’s other high-profile collaborators have taken a similarly hands-off tact. Kith’s first BW Army, released earlier this year, only meddles ever-so-slightly with the shoe through a small hit of tongue branding and exclusive colors like one dusty pink rendition while sneaker store BSTN’s added breathable mesh to monochrome BW Armys, and sneaker platform Hart Copy, who put a lot of people onto this model through a collaboration two years ago, recently dropped a subtly faux-dirtied version of its previously plain BW Army.  

Whitaker Group is the only outlier so far. The parent company of several streetwear boutiques opted for a rodeo theme with its collaboration, complete with studs and animal prints. However, the most elevated item in the collection was actually a plain all-white BW Army, because this 50-year-old German sports shoe already looks the part in its OG form. The less you mess with it, the more upscale it looks. 

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