How to Make an Old Shoe New? Rip. Tear. Redefine
Venerable Taiwanese retailer INVINCIBLE is one of the best in the biz. When it takes on adidas' Handball Spezial sneaker, INVINCIBLE doesn't merely content itself with a surface-level colorway collaboration.
No, INVINCIBLE ripped and shredded the adidas Handball Spezial until it was born anew.
Officially titled the "Terrace Redefined," INVINCIBLE's adidas Handball Spezial is a real beaut. It's even available in the most normal low-top adidas colorways in the world, your classic white and beige and your classic black and white.
But it's just too good to be normal.
INVINCIBLE did indeed redefine the classic terrace sneaker by remaking the Handball Spezial of butter-soft leather so thin that the tongue naturally curls upwards. It ripped off and restitched panels with a willful insouciance that left torn edges and wobbly chunky of suede. The heel is a slab held together with thick stitches. Even the sole is disheveled, as if the shoe'd been dug up from the ground.
Primitive adidas.
It's awesome stuff, really. One of the rare transcendent sneaker collaborations that takes the care to actually, y'know, redesign a sneaker. I'll admit that the photography really sells this thing, though, as INVINCIBLE's Handball Spezial looked quite flat in the ordinary product photos revealed earlier this year.
Still, you can't keep good design down. Judge for yourself when the shoes hit INVINCIBLE's website on April 12 (and probably sell out instantly).
INVINCIBLE is probably best known overseas for its collaborative New Balance sneakers, often co-created with collab-crazed Japanese clothing label N.HOOLYWOOD, a reflection of INVINCIBLE's militaria design inclinations.
But you really oughta just know it for putting in enough elbow grease to distinguish its stuff from everything else out there.
With a million ordinary Handball Spezials already out there, that's certainly worth something.
