adidas has already incurred the wrath of Kanye West once for what he perceived as "fake YEEZYS" but that doesn't mean the sneaker giant has ceased producing comfy rubber slides that have YEEZY vibes. Behold Stella McCartney's new adidas clogs because it must be said: they're kinda giving YEEZY.
Ye recently lashed out at adidas earlier this summer over some of its new slide sandals in a since-deleted and grammar-free Instagram post.
"I’m not standing for this blatant copying no more," Ye wrote of the sold-out Adilette 22 sandal. "This shoe is a fake YEEZY made by adidas themselves."
Shortly after, Ye's team created an official YEEZY Instagram page to promote his YEEZY GAP Engineered by Balenciaga collection.
The account hasn't mentioned anything about adidas thus far but it appears to be entirely unaffiliated with the Three Stripes, hinting at a potential separation of YEEZY and adidas, church and state.
Ye is the sole owner of the YEEZY brand, remember, although adidas produces its red-hot sneaker line and the seemingly discontinued YEEZY SEASON apparel collection.
Though adidas itself hasn't publicly responded to Ye's YEEZY imitation accusations, it has made subtle shifts in communication.
For instance, adidas took great pains to clarify the retro design inspiration for its adiFOM Q sneaker, perhaps to preempt any callouts from Ye or his fans (supporters sent snarky tweets anyways).
Things appeared to be cooling until Ye accused adidas of again "stealing" from the YEEZY brand in a random Instagram DM sent in early August on YEEZY DAY 2022.
"When I originally ordered adidas to make more Yeezy slides, the GM lied to my face and said they didn't have the capacity," Ye claimed. "Meanwhile, adidas was copying my slides and making their own version of the YEEZY slide."
All we have to go on here are Ye's words alone but the similarities between YEEZY sneakers and recent adidas models, like the Ozrah, have provided plenty of fodder for social media commenters to lodge impromptu complaints.
To be clear, there are a lot more moving parts beneath the surface.
adidas and YEEZY employ various footwear designers, product testers, manufacturing leads, for instance.
It's not unconscionable that the similar shoes actually are pure coincidence, infinite monkeys and all that.
However, it's not hard to believe that execs at adidas may want to ape the success of YEEZY with comparable in-house creations.
There's a lot of grey area and it's not worth pointing fingers where they don't belong. But no one's gonna stop a certain class of internet commenter from noting the similarities between new adidas shoes and YEEZY footwear.
If you're so inclined, you may use Stella McCartney's new adidas clog sandals as evidence.
On August 14, the British designer introduced her latest adidas collaboration with women's apparel and a couple special shoes, like the Outdoor Boost 2.0 and these chunky clogs.
Available in two monochrome colors on adidas website for $130 apiece — with a blue colorway currently only offered in certain regions — Stella McCartney's vegan, partially recycled adidas clogs can charitably be described as "YEEZY-adjacent."
To be clear, we're talking purely about visual similarities and not wholesale imitation, nor are we accusing anyone of lifting designs from anyone else, just taking note of a couple comparable elements.
McCartney's adidas clogs employ unique outsole tooling, for instance, and the upper is relatively distinct when taken as a single piece.
Though it's not fair to say, without any evidence, that the McCartney clog appears to be inspired by the YEEZY Foam Runner and YEEZY Slide but, at the same time, it's not entirely left-field to acknowledge some stylistic crossover.
I mean, Ye didn't invent chunky rubber sandals but YEEZY did create some terribly distinct footwear designs for adidas.
I suppose until Ye returns to Instagram to vent, there's little else to be said aside from a reasonable comparison between the shoes.
But perhaps there's no bad blood after all.
Ye's been hard at work teasing his YEEZY GAP sunglasses — which one could reasonably compare to existing eyewear from brands as disparate as Walter Van Beirendonck and Oakley — but perhaps he found time to reconnect with his friends at adidas in between it all, because he's apparently back to wearing YEEZYs after several months apart.
