Today, adidas announces the appointment of Alasdhair Willis to Chief Creative Officer. The Chief Creative Officer is the lead within the adidas design community
Source: Alasdhair Willis to Shape Future of adidas as Chief Creative Officer
In December 2020 adidas set the sneaker culture and fashion world on fire with the announcement that they were working with Jerry Lorenzo and Fear of God. The moved was hailed on sneaker sites as a blow to Nike akin to Kanye leaving the Swoosh to carry Yeezy to the masses. Fear of God had just delivered a lauded collection with Nike in the previous month. I questioned if the venture would be fruitful as Fear of God sneakers were flooding Nike’s Clearance Store at prices as low as 59.99. I also questioned if Lorenzo’s cache was rich enough to bring basketball back to prominence for adidas when the roster of adidas Basketball athletes are not a crew of ballers who generate interest beyond the court.
I understood Lorenzo’s importance to fashion, but I thought adidas had a different path they could take with basketball and it wasn’t one that included a hard pivot to fashion. I stopped questioning as I grew to think that over time Lorenzo was going to reshape adidas basketball with a West Coast flavor. The division moved to Los Angeles and a bevy of job listings were posted, but that was a year ago. Since that time the only real image of anything Jerry Lorenzo and adidas showed up at Innersect. A sweater with an archived adidas wordmark was a part of an art and fashion project curated by Lorenzo. Outside of work in the community of L.A., there hasn’t been anything really mentioned about where adidas Basketball is headed.
There has been an NBA Championship, and Olympics Gold Medal in hoops, an WNBA Championship with Candace Parker leading the Chicago Sky, an NBA draft, a new NBA Season, an All-Star Weekend for basketball and now there is March Madness with Championship Week kicking off. I could run through the list of summer leagues like The Drew, or Rucker that returned after a hiatus, but I think the picture is being drawn. Now, adidas has followed up their announcement of Lorenzo heading adidas Basketball with the announcement that Alasdhair Willis is heading up the Future of adidas:
adidas announces the appointment of Alasdhair Willis to Chief Creative Officer. The Chief Creative Officer is the lead within the adidas design community and is responsible for shaping, defining, and shepherding the creative direction for the global brand and its three major labels – Performance, Originals, and Sportswear – to deliver a unified adidas brand experience. Willis will begin his contract beginning of April, reporting to Executive Board Member of Global Brands, Brian Grevy.
The inclusion of performance could represent any segment of sports for adidas, but it’s an interesting discussion point to raise. Will Willis have input on the work at Fear of God? Will this addition to adidas’ design branch contribute to conflicts in creativity? We are entering critical moments for basketball again and there aren’t any adidas athletes in basketball more capable of carrying the Three Stripes into the future than a reinvigorated James Harden. I even wrote a post a few days ago about this:
In the post I brought up that Fear of God is still nowhere to be seen on the adidas Basketball site. The best moments in basketball are starting this month. We know that Alasdhair is leading change at adi, but doesn’t adidas have to do something now? I’m positive Nike will produce something around Penny Hardaway and the Nike sponsored University of Memphis program. They will most certainly highlight Nike sponsored Duke and Coach K’s final March Madness. Under Armour will highlight women’s hoops with the Gamecocks led by Dawn Staley, and Nike will undoubtedly ride with UCONN. Jordan Brand is happy to have a UCLA program back in the mix. Kansas will hold a top seed and is the flagship. A Fear of God collection could really make noise right now, but will it?