Profile: Stan Smith

The Adidas Stan Smith: you don't become the man until you've walked a mile in his shoes. #motivationalwalker

When fashion outlier and Saint Laurent creative director Hedi Slimane rebuffed the sneaker trend as a footwear of yore, he predicted wrong. Over the past few years, sneakers have become the people's choice of street luxury and street casual. They are as ubiquitous as they're stylishly objects of desire.

One such sneaker here is the Adidas Stan Smith, a long withstanding force whose marketability has entailed numerous reissues today. Compared with the tennis superstar himself who has won 39 singles titles and 61 doubles titles back in 1973, the namesake label is the No. 1 player of street casual footwear. It's distinctiveness is pared down beside the Jeremy Scott halloween equivalent of teddy bears and homoeroticised wings, it's iconic structure in full smooth grain leather, perforated 3-stripes, and tonal rubber outsole is as breakthrough as its minimalist aesthetic. And whereas Smith now coaches in Hilton Head, Southern California, the Adidas Stan Smith, however, is still regnant- and every bit relevant all over the globe.

At 30 million pairs sold worldwide, these pristine simple classics are famous. Sported by celebrities from David Bowie to Rihanna, editors are too lining the front row in Stan Smith during fashion week like a front set of teeth. Designers like Phoebe Philo and Marc Jacobs have worn them down the runway, and every other netizen who wished they were normcore enough to take on the Stan Smith has touted them the cornerstone of classic footwear merchandising. More recently, Gisele Bundchen has modeled in them with no clothes on except for a white pair of socks, as raw as they looked.

"It's like a canvas in a way," says Stan Smith, as reported by the New York Times. Being likened to a blank slate, the shoes are a simplicity that allows personalisation of one's own style to accent the austerity of its iconic white form. From selvedge denim to pipeline trousers, at the outset, the sneakers are what pulls it all together. It has a structure that makes wearing them louche still look cool. It has a sleekness that still screams an understated luxury. It's a shoe that, while does not brag like the bells and whistles of other designer footwear, still draws the attention to itself. Its appeal, synonymous to the white t-shirt, is contagious.

It's a shoe bag.
The New Yorker just can't help himself.
From masturbating all over the Smith's.

As with fashion to move where the pendulum swings, designers have caught on to the momentum by appropriating the Smith's. For its season, Raf Simons's customized "R" assumed the perforated 3-stripes, now available in a spectrum of colours. Alexander Wang, who referenced the athletic scene (each season more explicitly) in a sneaker fetish of a Spring 2015 collection, has a suite of bags lined up in sneaker simulacrum. Instead of washing out, the Stan Smiths are celebrated more than ever, in a collaborative effort with every cross cultural reference imaginable too. Like with the crass American Dad cartoon feature, or with the American heartthrob, Pharrell Williams, your pair of Stan Smith is an untouchable classic that will see better days ahead when reissues go through yet another life cycle.