Month: February 2021

Today, adidas announced plans to formally divest from Reebok as part of a forthcoming five-year strategy, which will include reporting adidas as a “discontinued operation” starting with the first quarter of 2021. The company will reveal further details about this plan alongside its 2020 yearly results on March 10. “Reebok and adidas will be able to significantly better realize their growth potential independently of each other,” adidas CEO Kaspar Rorsted said in a statement acquired by Reuters.In 2006, the German sportswear company acquired Reebok for $3.8 billion USD, and in the years since has focused on bolstering sales performance, shuttering underperforming outposts and cutting expenses in an effort to turn around the Boston-based brand. However, Reuters’ banking source estimates that Reebok is currently worth about €1 billion EUR ($1.2 billion USD).This lackluster performance has led to recent rumblings that adidas may cut ties with the Boston-based brand. Reports of unhappy investors and Reebok’s potential sale emerged in October 2020, following the release of adidas’s Q2 2020 earnings that revealed Reebok-generated revenue was down 42 percent and sales fell as much as 44 percent. Rumors of adidas’s newly announced five-year strategy emerged in December, alongside reports that Rorsted was looking to sell Reebok for $2.4 billion USD; possible buyers at the time included private equity firms Permira and Triton as well as VF Corp. But in spite of the turbulence, Reebok releases have continued to come down the pipeline, notably with a recent rework of the 1985 Club C silhouette.

As a crown jewel of James Whitner’s Whittaker Group, A Ma Maniére is no stranger to luxurious footwear collaborations — and its latest effort is a high-end take on Jordan Brand’s Air Jordan 3. Offering a stately, simplified color scheme and a rich assemblage of materials, AMM’s AJ3 is both an apt follow-up to 2019’s Air Force 1 “Hand Wash Cold” effort with Nike and the beginning of a new chapter for its co-created projects. Uppers are constructed from an elegant tumbled white leather, with raw leather trim running around mudguards, eyestays and more. Gray suede overlays appear on the forefoot, midfoot and heel alike, providing a toned-down replacement to the 3’s standard elephant print. A rich “Violet Ore” shade on the top half of the midsole infuses some color into the mix, while bone-toned accents on the bottom half of the midsole and the eyestays add an on-trend dash of aged detailing.Though a silver Jumpman logo is embroidered on the right shoe’s tongue, the left shoe swaps Michael Jordan’s signature mark out for A Ma Maniére’s A logo. The look is completed by a sporty silver quilted satin material on the collar lining, gray heel tabs and a gray Air unit in the midsole’s heel.A release date for the A Ma Maniére x Air Jordan 3 has yet to be announced, but according to the Whittaker Group, it’ll debut in full family sizes sometime in 2021. Men’s pairs are priced at $200 USD and preschool pairs at $90 USD.For more news on upcoming sneakers, check out the latest installment of HYPEBEAST’s weekly Best Footwear Drops list.

When it comes to Nike and its interminable list of Air Max collaborations, one makeup that tends to be highly sought after within the sneaker community is the Air Max 90 “Bacon”. The salt-cured pork-inspired installment originally launched back in 2004 alongside NYC sneaker boutique Dave’s Quality Meat, and it now set to receive its first-ever reissue in 2021.Dave Ortiz and Chris Keefe — owners of the aforementioned Big Apple shop — reimagined the Tinker Hatfield-crafted silhouette with a rather delectable motif 17 years ago, and all of its original design cues are being brought back. Leather bases are dialed to a crisp white, and come overlapped by red suede overlays, pink Swooshes and laces as well as brown molds attached to the throat and heels to best translate the breakfast meal staple. From there, a light grey hue smears all over the suede mudguards, while tan coats the sock liners.Sliding down under is a midsole which sees through to an angelic outer and comes supported with a dark brown rear mold that encases soft pink Air units. Finishing off its entire fatty-but-flavorful aesthetic is all-brown treading.You can check out an early look at the pair up top, and note that Nike will likely be confirming its release date in the coming weeks.For more sneaker news, official images of the 2021 CLOT x Nike Air Max 1 “Kiss of Death” have popped up.