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With its football-inspired aesthetic, Sportswear aligns with blokecore, the Gen Z trend that swept TikTok in 2022. “When designing the collection, we thought about how Gen Z likes to style blokecore with their everyday wear, whether they’re making a TikTok or if they are going shopping and hanging out with friends.” says Adidas’s Sportswear senior designer Jasmin Bynoe. “We want to stick to Adidas’s DNA and blend Performance and Originals elements, while evolving with the consumer and how they express themselves.”
Globally, sports-inspired apparel was valued at $88.5 billion in 2022 and set to outperform performance apparel (valued at $97.6 billion in 2022) by 2027, says Euromonitor analyst Marguerite LeRolland, driven by the largest apparel and footwear markets around the world including US, China and in Europe.
There will be seasonal sportswear drops with refreshed product offerings, but Adidas wants to make sure all the designs are as comfortable and versatile as possible, rather than following micro-trends, Arana adds. “We’re seeing a shift towards a more mindful ‘capsule wardrobe’, and the Sportswear products are all staples that can be styled a bunch of different ways depending on the occasion or season. That’s one thing that sets us apart from other brands in the space.”
Post-Covid, consumers are looking for ways to simplify their lives (45 per cent global respondents), feel stylish (33 per cent), says LeRolland. Sixty per cent of global respondents quote “comfort” as the top purchase criterium for apparel, she adds, according to Euromonitor’s Voice of the Consumer, Lifestyle Survey 2022.
The collection will feature a range of new sneaker models, taking elements from some of Adidas’s bestselling Performance shoes, from the Boost to the 4D. “Gen Alpha and Gen Z, they don’t know the Adidas classics. So for them it could be the Avryn that’s their iconic shoe, they might be saying, ‘remember when they did that with the Boost and switched it up?’.”
The sportswear design team are constantly observing Gen Z styling habits on social media, on research trips and in discussions with young athletes, to create pieces to suit their needs. For the Taro tracksuit in this first collection, for example, there’s a double waistband on the trousers, to account for Gen Zs wearing their trousers lower on their hips, Bynoe says.
Looking ahead, Adidas is confident in Sportswear’s longevity. Arana says she and her teams are already planning the label up to Autumn/Winter 2024. “We have ambitious targets for Sportswear and are confident it will resonate with the target audience, with new products and cross-business collabs already in the works.”
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