In 2024, adidas Originals and Brain Dead made waves with a highly coveted friends-and-family release of their bowling-inspired silhouette. Following the silhouette's wider release, including a three-way collaboration with Dover Street Market, adidas Originals and the Los Angeles-based brand return today with two distinctive new colorways of the enigmatic, off-kilter shoe.
Evolving over a number of years, adidas and Brain Dead's partnership has seen the two brands take archival icons across sport and lifestyle and push them into altogether new spaces. This spirit continues through the adidas x Brain Dead Bowling shoes, as the lesser known silhouette becomes a defiant sartorial expression for those who refuse to blend in.
Referencing an archival adidas model from the '70s, the latest iterations of the Brain Dead Bowling shoe swap out the classic black and white look for a much bolder approach – one featuring a premium leopard fur-style leather upper, the other featuring a premium snakeskin-inspired leather upper. Each pair is finished with gold 'adidas' and 'Brain Dead' debossing on the lateral, with custom sock liners, shoe-laces, and hang tags.
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rriving in limited quantities on October 8th, both colorways of the adidas x Brain Dead Bowling inspired shoes are available via adidas.co.za.
About Brain Dead:
Brain Dead is a creative studio with deep ties to the fringe.It is a global collective of artists, designers, musicians, filmmakers, and general creatives. Brain Dead is not one person, nor is it one idea. It sits in the space between people, culture, entertainment and product.
The initial ideas for Brain Dead were conceived in 2015 where CEO and Creative Director, Kyle Ng, quickly recognized a hole in the contemporary apparel market for presenting the culture he cared for in a purposeful way. The "culture" of streetwear of the day had become too masculine, contemporary luxury mens and womenswear too plagiaristic; while the leading successful brands in the marketplace had turned to pumping out mundane fast fashion that lacked any meaningful purpose. To create an impactful brand that truly represented Kyle's interests meant creating apparel that was secondary to the culture that informed it.
In most instances that meant building the surrounding culture first; from the campaigns surrounding the product, events coordinated for launches, and graphical references chosen, everything needed to speak to the intersection of a hodgepodge of sub-culture in art, music, literature, sport, and cinema that became foundationally "Brain Dead".
Brain Dead is at its best an occupation of a space one step inside the fringe of subculture; a willingness to share the outsiders influence with a broader audience and stand proudly for it.
