The first drop of the Adidas x Gucci collaboration is officially here, with a special pop-up at Design Orchard that’s well worth the visit. By Gordon Ng.
If you’ve strolled down Orchard Road this week, there’s a good chance you’ve caught a glimpse of Gucci’s splashy takeover at the Design Orchard building. Take a fully wallpapered elevator up to the third floor, and you’ll arrive at the pop-up created to mark the Italian luxury house’s first drop of its collaboration with sportswear mega brand Adidas.
The Adidas x Gucci collaboration was first unveiled at the latter brand’s Exquisite Gucci runway show in February this year. The runway pieces, which are slated to hit stores later this year in September, were designed as a hybridised, sportswear-ified take on tailoring. This first drop, which is now in stores, has a more casual, sporty outlook with a focus on athletic and athleisure style staples.
At the heart of this first collection is a freewheeling mish-mash of Adidas’ and Gucci’s visual identities. Gucci’s GG monogram and logotype are mixed with Adidas’ trefoil logo, remixed in a retro colour palette evocative of the ‘70s. Adidas x Gucci also smartly picks up on the two brands’ shared affinity for iconic stripes: track pants, for example, come with Adidas’ three white stripes on one leg and Gucci’s red and green web on the other.
All this logo-mashing is splashed across the extensive collection, which spans ready-to-wear, bags, small leather goods, shoes and accessories. There is, naturally, a key sneaker: the Adidas Gazelle, an iconic football shoe first released in 1968, which gets the luxury treatment courtesy of Gucci in materials like suede, velvet, satin, leather and monogram canvas.
To celebrate the launch, Gucci also put on what’s been touted as the biggest outdoor party in Orchard Road since the pandemic. In attendance: just about every fashionable personality in town imaginable. And while the party is now a thing of recent memory, the shoppable pop-up is still very much open to the public from now till 27 June. To shop the collection, click here.
All images courtesy of Gucci.