Adidas Needs These People to Design the Yeezy Line

Attention: Adidas is hiring people to work on Kanye West’s Yeezy line. The brand posted job listings on its website for a variety of positions, with titles including footwear designer, apparel designer, and more. The people who fill these big shoes will dictate whether the Yeezy line will be a commercial success or failure — so Adidas had better pick the right people.

The brand  will surely hire new faces from outside the company, but it will also need to ride its current wave of success by looking  within to see if there’s anyone already there who could work on the project, too.

Everyone who loves sneakers, even just a little bit, is going to be applying for these openings, but Adidas needs to be careful with their hires. They need people who understand what Kanye is trying to do with his line, but also know their way around footwear design and the sneaker industry. Here are the talented heavy-hitters Adidas should be going hard for.

The Air Jordan line wouldn’t have been the same without Tinker Hatfield, and the same can be said for Kanye’s Yeezy Boosts without Nic Galway. Galway, who’s the VP of Global Design for Adidas Originals, was designer behind the 750 and 350 Boosts, as well as the wildly popular NMDs, Tubulars, and Qasas. He’s the man who’s pushing Adidas in its new direction, and his track record is nothing but success after success. It’s hard to imagine the new Yeezy line having the same energy as its previous releases without Galway’s involvement. His plate may be full with his work on Adidas Originals -- where he’s doing a great job. But if Adidas wants the Yeezy line to have lasting power, Galway needs to be a key part of it.

Adidas went through legal hell and paid a ton of money to get the so-called Three Amigos -- Marc Dolce, Denis Dekovic, and Mark Miner -- to design footwear for the brand. Dekovic does football product, Miner does running, and Dolce was the man behind Nike Sportswear.so why not put the latter to use to help out Kanye? Dolce’s expertise is creating sports footwear that plays off of a company’s heritage by reinterpreting it for a new audience. That’s what Adidas has been doing a lot of lately, even if it’s subtle with the Yeezy line. It’s unclear what Dolce will be doing exactly for Adidas, but having him involved with Kanye wouldn’t hurt.

Call me crazy, but I’ve always believed that some of the most brilliant and insightful minds in the footwear industry are the people who once worked in retail. Interacting with the consumer helps you know what people want to buy. Adidas is looking to fill a position that recognizes “consumer insights” and “deliver the category vision,” and it would interesting to see Hikmet Sugoer, who designed Adidas’ most popular collaboration this year, the Solebox x Adidas Ultra Boost Uncaged, head up this operation. He recently left Solebox due to creative differences after selling the store that he had owned for 12 years. But even without the Solebox affiliation, he’s been able to create a line of sweatshirts and his own sneaker brand that people are into. It would be nice to see someone who knows modern trends but also the heritage of Adidas to keep the Yeezy line clean and cohesive.

Adidas may have stopped making clothes with Kanye after Yeezy Season 1, but it’s looking to bring back the apparel offerings with the announced expansion of the Yeezy line. Kanye’s previous clothing offerings have been, well, not very “Adidas” and very expensive. A lot of the garments have been oversized and distressed military surplus gear, with a lot of pieces made from jersey material: sweatpants and sweatshirts and the like. One designer that understands that aesthetic but can design a collection  that’s more similar to sportswear is John Elliott, and Kanye used to wear his stuff all the time. The biggest issue with Elliott is that he’s basically a Nike employee, with a LeBron collaboration under his belt and solely featuring the brand’s sneakers in his runway shows. But if Adidas can already lure big designers over from Nike, why not woo John Elliott, too? Kanye would be happy.

One of the biggest bits of news that came out for the Yeezy line is that it would not only be for men anymore —it would spread across genders and be available for kids as well. There’s no one doing cooler women’s collections at Adidas right now than Stella McCartney. Her footwear collaborations with the brand, especially on the Ultra Boost, have been extremely good. It’s obvious that some men are still going to want the Yeezy items designed for women, and McCartney’s previous work has proven to be appealing to both sexes. She knows how Adidas works, has had a proven, ongoing collaboration with the brand, and gives Kanye another fashion designer to work with; a lane he’s forever attempted to be respected in.