adidas' Samba Looks Good. But It Looks Way Better as an Espadrille
CLOT’s latest adidas Samba retools the flat-footed football sneaker from the ground up, giving the classic shoe a summer-coded foundation that helps hold onto the last bit of seasonal warmth before fall.
The Samba Espadrille keeps the silhouette’s sharp T-shaped toebox but trades the usual gum sole for an outsole made of woven jute. Otherwise, this is the Samba we all know, down to the classic colorway.
Jute is a plant fiber typically woven into ropes, summertime sandals, and even the occasional luxury handbag. It's rustic, strong, and a shorthand for warm-weather leisure, at least since Picasso painted in espadrilles (yes, with a jute sole) on the Riviera.
Under a Samba, the material pulls terrace sneakers into off-duty mode.
This is a pretty familiar cornerstone of Edison Chen’s playbook with CLOT collaborations.
His footwear design language hinges on gently twisting familiar forms with just a touch of newness, nothing too dramatic but nothing so subtle as to be ignorable.
Remember CLOT’s silk-wrapped Air Force 1s designed to fray over time? The beaded Gazelles that turned adidas stripes into jewelry? Or this summer’s Stan Smith Espadrille? The Samba slots perfectly into the lineage of Chen’s clever material twists.
So yes, it’s still a Samba. Only now, when it lands later this fall on adidas’ site, the football sneaker has swapped its shin guards for linen shorts.
This is a sneaker stitched to keep summer alive even as fall closes in, the kind of terrace trainer that simply refuses to let the season end and so much the better.
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