Adidas Originals

Adolf 'Adi' Dassler began making sports shoes in his mother's laundry room in Herzogenaurach, Germany in 1924, in partnership with his brother Rudolf. After a famously bitter split in 1948 — Rudolf founded Puma across the same small Bavarian river — Adi registered Adidas on August 18, 1949, gave it the three-stripe logo, and built it on a thesis that athletic performance, not lifestyle, was the foundation of meaningful sportswear. Over the following decades Adidas produced the shoes that defined entire eras: the Samba (1950, the all-time best-selling silhouette), the Superstar (1969), the Stan Smith (1971), the Originals line, and the Boost-cushioned Ultraboost. Under designer Y-3 partnership with Yohji Yamamoto (2002–), the Kanye West Yeezy line (2015–2022), and a long Pharrell Williams collaboration, Adidas became the most enduring bridge between high fashion and athletic shoes — a position it has fought to maintain since the Yeezy split. The brand operates from Herzogenaurach to this day. Roughly 60,000 employees globally, three families of product (Performance, Originals, Y-3), and an aesthetic history rich enough that almost any 1970s-80s silhouette can be reissued and find a market. Few companies have survived such hot-and-cold cycles by patiently returning to their archive.