adidas has Consortium and the number of collabs flowing through that division very rarely reach the regular sneaker buying public. They are always limited and usually go straight to the kids with the fastest bots or the best connects. If you’ve been following this site for at least a year, you know that I said adidas was going to slow down and begin losing ground. I said that around October of 2017. I was right, but that’s not to gloat. I’m an adidas fan. The slow down in resale of adidas shoes allowed me to pick up two of my favorite kicks last week for 130. Yep, two pair for 130. I’ve also picked up a bunch of NMDs at ridiculous prices from City Gear. Basically, adidas has fallen off in the place where it matters most; in the eyes of the cool the brand is a non-factor outside of Yeezy… and the Yeezy Sesame is sitting in stores today. You didn’t even have to register or sign up to cop. Which brings me to the point of this post.
https://www.facebook.com/madina.design/photos/a.10150228159644862/10156290902984862/?type=3&theater
This morning one of the dopest art and clothing brands in the UK posted the picture above. Madina, is an outlet for an artist who tied his design and art skill to his love of Hip-Hop culture. For Hip-Hop heads and 5%ers, Madina (Medina) is Brooklyn and while Hip-Hop started in the Bronx, the boroughs of New York are the foundation of the culture. When Madina decided to launch his clothing line he chose a name that would immediately resonate with the culture. This wasn’t done lightly and his skill shouldn’t be considered as just another graphic designer. By his own words Madina states:
I have always had a passion for art and illustration which led me to study Fine Art, Graphics and Photography at Camberwell School of Art in London. I continued to develop my skills and design style after studying and in recent years felt the time was right to channel my efforts into developing my own, independent brand.
In the picture above Madina is holding the piece that jump started his company. If you can’t make out what’s happening above, here is the lyric that set it off from Chuck D of Public Enemy,
Cause I’m Black and I’m proud
I’m ready and hyped plus I’m amped
Most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps
On the album “Fear of a Black Planet” Chuck D fired one of the loudest shots across the bough of the music industry. Public Enemy’s song “Fight the Power” was featured in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing”. The line above tore down the imagery of Elvis as the king of rock and roll and established the importance of Hip-Hop to the music industry. Madina created his artwork above to feature the deceased and living legends of Hip-Hop on “postage stamps”. What he is holding is the first copy that he has been working to have signed by the living artists.
What does all of this have to do with adidas and the fact that the brand needs to find a way to launch this version of the shoe Madina created? Everything. adidas was dead in 2015. They had signed Kanye and they had released the UltraBOOST, but those weren’t the shoes that actually helped to launch adidas into the very important resale stratosphere. The shoe that jump started it all was the adidas ZX Flux. In typical adidas fashion however, they killed the shoe by releasing too many colorways. I discuss this in the article below.
adidas has been an integral part of Hip-Hop. At this moment the brand is suffering from an identity crisis. The easiest way to recover from a crisis is to get back to your roots. While the brand has Run-DMC at its disposal they haven’t done anything to connect to Hip-Hop in a significant way. Kanye, Pusha T and Pharrell are good for what they are, and 21 Savage is okay, but the brand has a chance to relaunch the Flux and to reconnect to old heads and the next generation via something that is so organically aligned it’s ridiculous. The ZX Flux is a sneaker that was the right price and with the right design, Madina’s ZX Flux is the right shoe.
In the article above I explain that the printed Flux was easily one of the best models that adidas created. While the shoe did fall off, so has the NMD and the UltraBOOST. Right now the brand needs a real, honest, pitch to the sneaker market. The brand needs something that would resonate throughout the culture. Understandably it won’t be as simple as I’m making it out to be. There will have to be some logistics taken care of, but an authentic Madina x adidas collab would be a beautiful thing.
You can visit Madina Design by clicking here: https://www.madina.co.uk/
