THE ADIDAS ARCHIVE. THE FOOTWEAR COLLECTION

Three-Stripe Thrills
The history of the adidas shoe, from early beginnings until today

It all started in their mother’s laundry room in the quiet German town of Herzogenaurach. There, Adolf Dassler—known to everyone as “Adi”—and his brother Rudolf made their first pair of sports shoes. Hundreds of groundbreaking designs, epic moments, and star-studded collabs later, this book presents the first visual review of the adidas shoe through more than 357 models including never-before-seen prototypes and one-of-a-kind originals.

To further develop and tailor his products to athletes’ specific needs, Dassler asked them to return their worn footwear when no longer needed, with all the shoes eventually ending up in his attic (to this day, many athletes return their shoes to adidas, often as a thank you after winning a title or breaking a world record). This collection now makes up the adidas Historical Archive, one of the largest, if not the largest archive of any sports goods manufacturer in the world—which photographers Christian Habermeier and Sebastian Jäger have been visually documenting in extreme detail for years.

Shot using the highest reproduction techniques, these images reveal the fine details as much as the stains, the tears, the repair tape, the grass smudges, the faded autographs. It’s all here, unmanipulated and captured in extremely high resolution—and with it comes to light the personal stories of each individual wearer. We encounter the shoes worn by West Germany’s football team during its “miraculous” 1954 World Cup win and those worn by Kathrine Switzer when she ran the Boston Marathon in 1967, before women were officially allowed to compete; custom models for stars from Madonna to Lionel Messi; collabs with the likes of Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, Raf Simons, Stella McCartney, or Yohji Yamamoto; as well as the brand’s trailblazing techniques and materials, like the use of recycled plastic from the sea, for which adidas is already a pioneer.

Accompanied by a foreword by designer Jacques Chassaing and expert texts, each picture tells us the why and the how, but also conveys the driving force behind adidas. What we discover goes beyond mere design; in the end, these are just shoes, worn out by their users who have loved them—but they are also first-hand witnesses of our sports, design, and culture history, from adidas’s beginnings in 1919 until today.

“This volume is a tool for inspiration and a treasure trove that showcases adidas’ ambition, identity, and originality.”
— Jacques Chassaing

Concept and photography by:
Christian Habermeier has been working as a photographer and designer since 1989. He taught photography and digital illustration from 2000 to 2006, and also has his own projects in Cuba, Kenya, Nepal, India, Switzerland, and Hong Kong.

Sebastian Jäger studied design at the Georg-Simon-Ohm University of Applied Sciences in Nuremberg, focusing on moving images and photography, where he met former lecturer Christian Habermeier in 2005. Their joint company studio waldeck photographers serves customers from industry and the cultural sector. Since 2011, they have been creating a visual record of the holdings of the historical adidas archive.