First Look: Wales Bonner Meets adidas Y-3
For Spring/Summer 2026, Wales Bonner has conceived perhaps her most streamlined adidas sneakers to date, at least in terms of breathability. Oh, and she's partnering with adidas Y-3 for a titanic collaboration that brings together two of adidas' most powerful players.
Wales Bonner is the reigning queen of the flat adidas sneaker. Her Samba shoes are so vital that one could easily argue that that Wales Bonner collaboration was singlehandedly responsible for kicking off the modern sleek sneaker boom.
For what it's worth, Wales Bonner has never ceased innovating.
The restlessly canny British designer has dabbled in alternative shoe shapes aplenty, from a soft leather Superstar to her very own adidas silhouette called the "Karintha."
As such, little surprise that Wales Bonner has mostly ceased creating Samba sneakers, leaving adidas to fill the void.
Instead, Wales Bonner is cooking up remixing of her own suave adidas sneakers, again swapping out conventional materials — your dark suede, your muted leather — for more statement stuff.
Wales Bonner's new adidas collection included a sumptuous leather bowling bag emblazoned with "Y-3 WB," the first sign of her debut adidas Y-3 collaboration.
The second is Wales Bonner's brilliant sandal-style basket-woven Y-3 Field sneaker that eschews conventional uppers entirely in favor of a loose-woven design that allows the shoe to function more like a sandal, with some of the models' bare feet all but visible on the runway.
Wales Bonner has also designed a new iteration of her adidas Karintha sneaker in a glossy patent-style leather with a fold-over tongue, making it look as though her signature shoe has gone bowling, though it was worn with side-zip adidas Y-3 "tuxedo" track pants instead of little bowling shorts.
Still, adidas, Yohji Yamamoto, and Wales Bonner? Now that's a team-up.
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