Has adidas found Kanye West's heir?

Last April 19, Jerry Lorenzo presented in the setting of the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles the eighth Fear of God collection, in what was the brand's first physical show. In addition to offering tailoring made up of ample fits and more than convincing styling solutions, Lorenzo finally presented to the general public Fear of God Athletics, the sportswear line created together with adidas whose first news dates back two years now. Despite the sporty vocation, the line includes not only sneakers and sweatpants but also a more luxurious vision of sportswear, between large duffel bags and pants in which the three stripes resemble everything but what we might expect from a collection with adidas. That must be why more than a few people, on the sidelines of the show that featured an audience composed only of Lorenzo's close friends, speculated that there, on the runway of the Los Angeles location, adidas might have found its heir to Kanye West.

The reasons for a seemingly risky comparison are actually simple to identify and understand, starting precisely with the choice to mix luxury and sportswear as done by West in his first Yeezy collections. Not only hoodies and sneakers precisely but also trench coats, over jackets, and knitwear found space in Yeezy Seasons to name a few examples. Items whose price indicated the ambition of the collection itself. The reasons, of course, do not stop there, we could talk about color palettes, but above all one of the staging reminded the show at Madison Square Garden in which Kanye West had presented Yeezy Season 3. If that time the soundtrack had been a still "work in progress" The Life of Pablo, this time it was Sampha and Pusha-T who respectively opened and closed the show while keeping intact the spirit and vibe of a signature Ye presentation. Of course, this is no coincidence. Lorenzo has been working for a long time with West, who discovered and believed in the talent of the American designer, who in turn seems to have absorbed Kanye's teachings like a sponge, proposing them now in a revised and corrected key.

For its part, adidas desperately needs to find a new golden goose to fill the void left by Kanye West after the German brand decided to terminate the partnership following the rapper's anti-Semitic statements. Replicating Yeezy's success is difficult, if not impossible, as much because of the status West enjoyed in the heyday of his sneakers as because of the period of sneaker culture itself, profoundly different from the one that crowned the 350 and other silhouettes. Jerry Lorenzo probably does not have Kanye West's talent, and perhaps never even presumed to want to have it, but he can count on the ability to simply and effectively reinterpret codes and styles already seen over the years, bringing into adidas that enthusiasm and freshness that currently lacks.