Nobody could have predicted where Edison Chen was going next. Or that it would look like this.
The Canadian-born Chen (who’s lived past lives as a rapper and a Hong Kong movie star) made a name for himself in sneakers over the last two decades through Clot, the streetwear label he co-founded in 2003. Clot’s in-demand footwear collaborations, mostly with Nike, brought the East to the West by dressing retro sneakers in Chinese themes. Clot’s relationship with Nike has been prolific—this year alone, they released seven sneakers together.
Behind the scenes, an exit plan was brewing: Adidas was courting Clot. The parties struck a deal earlier this year. What they were working on was unlike anything Clot had created with a sneaker brand before.
The fact of the partnership was not a well-kept secret—it leaked on X (formerly known as Twitter) in June and has been whispered about by industry insiders for months—but the actual substance of what Clot x Adidas would be was kept secret right up until last week. The motivations that formed the collaboration must have been a surprise from the beginning, even for Adidas.
“When we started working with Adidas, one of the main statements that I told them was that I want to make shoes, and not sneakers,” says Chen, who is Clot’s creative director.
What they arrived at is somewhere in between. Clot unveiled the first chapter of its new work with Adidas last weekend at a show for Shanghai Fashion Week that celebrated Clot’s 20-year anniversary. Models descended down a wide runway of black stairs in Adidas silhouettes that eschewed their origins as sports performance items. There were Gazelles with espadrille soles and Superstars outfitted with hard bottoms and chunky, rippled platforms.
When Clot began its deal with Adidas this year, Chen didn’t want to rely on old formulas. He’s been making sneakers alongside Clot co-founder Kevin Poon long enough to know the cheat codes. At Adidas, he’s intentionally avoiding them.
“We came into the door at Adidas and we were like, no colorways,” says Chen. “No logos on this and that, that’s too easy. I mean, it’s not easy, but it’s just too expected.”
The Clot x Adidas footwear looks like nothing Clot has released before. Some of the early feedback reflects this—sneakerheads looking for new hypebeast trinkets have already voiced their displeasure. But Chen wants to bring them somewhere different, to invite them to be more mature in their dress.
The hope is that this direction for Clot’s footwear can speak to its existing fans in a novel way while simultaneously reaching a totally separate audience. The Gazelle espadrille was made with women in mind and has a specific muse.
“I designed this with the dream of Phoebe Philo wearing it,” says Chen. “That was my goal.”
Adidas questioned the idea of an espadrille at first. Chen says that the brand wanted a cosmetic solution and offered to apply a roped treatment on top of an existing sole as a compromise. Adidas’ factories didn’t have the machinery required to make espadrilles, which meant an Adidas designer had to introduce a new mode of production to the brand in order to make the shoe a reality.
The apparel from Clot’s first Adidas offerings reads as a rudeboy rendition of The Talented Mr. Ripley. Chen’s inspiration came partly from his recent summers spent on Italy’s Amalfi Coast. There are unisex, crocheted two-piece tracksuits that are see-through by default but can be layered to fill in the gaps. There’s a suit jacket and a dressy pajama top.
“This moment, especially for our fans, is a reality check,” says Chen. “It’s like, where and how do I want to dress right now?”
Chen thinks that maybe the people who have been collecting sneakers for the past two decades, the same people who have chased jeans and tees from Clot, are ready for something else. Adidas, through its deal with Clot, is betting on the same.
Clot has worked with Adidas before—on designs like a rich red ZX800, in 2008, or a Chinatown shopping bag-inspired ZX Flux, in 2015—but is best known for its Nike projects. Its prolific run of Nike collaborations went right up until this September, when Clot launched a silky, exclusive Air Jordan 5 Low through Juice, the Clot brand store that has locations in China, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, and Taiwan.
Now that Clot and Chen have moved on from Nike, he’s taken the brand’s name out of his vocabulary. The designer uses inexplicit terms when speaking about his last sneaker partner a day after the 20th anniversary show, but the blanks are easy enough to fill in.
“I was uninspired and I was unmotivated at my previous digs,” says Chen, “and I felt a little unappreciated.”
The backing from Adidas is the most significant investment a sneaker brand has made in Clot. It puts Edison Chen’s brand right alongside powerhouse collaborators like Pharrell and Bad Bunny at the top tier of Adidas Originals, the sub-label that houses Adidas’ lifestyle sneakers.
While most of the Adidas shoes that Clot debuted at Shanghai Fashion Week won’t arrive until next year, the brand wanted to have an immediate offering. Last weekend, the day after the show, Clot and Adidas released a black and cream version of the Superstar in collaboration with Japanese brand Neighborhood. That initial shoe, more conservative than what’s on the horizon, has a rippled outsole and a perforated upper reminiscent of Clot’s 2012 Superstar’s.
Next from Clot x Adidas will be the welted Superstar with its shark-tooth sole, which is meant to align with the chunky shoe trend without being truly hefty. Chen says that shoe will debut in January, followed in April by another mature Superstar in the hard-bottom, Hender Scheme-style with painted edges. After that, Chen says, the Gazelle is scheduled for a May drop.
Just 12 hours removed from the grand debut of Clot x Adidas at Fashion Week last Friday night (even less hours if you count the overflowing post-show celebration at nightclub La Fin), Chen held court in a showroom in Shanghai. In a small space packed out with what’s to come from Clot, Chen spoke with Complex to explain how he’s embracing new challenges, why he landed at Adidas, and how he plans to bring Clot’s supporters with him. The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Was it important to be able to have something ready to go right when the show happened?
One hundred percent, dude. I pushed, and I pushed, and I pushed, and I’m pretty much a perfectionist as well. I don't want to just release something to release it, but when I'm working with Adidas this time, there's chapters—it's like a book. It's not like, let's just do this and this, just do this and let's just do this. No disrespect to any other company, but for me to be able to find a challenge and find a passion, I need to understand the long road. And the first moment made super sense to me is that me and Neighborhood, we're great friends.
We were just starting a collab when there were rumblings of this maybe happening and I said, “Hey, you know what? We need to drop a shoe the day after the announcement.” And everyone was like, “What the fuck, are you sure?” I was like, "Do you want to wait? Do you want to wait? OK. Are you sure?" And they're like, “No.”
I guess whatever has happened happened for other people, but I was like, we need to hit them hard. We need to almost door by door knock and be like, “Hi, we're with Adidas now—do you want to wear us?”
And I really told the team—I was like, listen, my job is to overnight-transition people into our family, into your family.
It’s like you wake up the next morning and it’s a new chapter.
You never think about it, and then all of a sudden, you're running to it without even being able to process it. And I thought that was a very important thing, also, to show the dedication of Adidas to us—we feel like this is important. Can you make it happen?
This is not rocket science. What we did here [points to Clot x Neighborhood x Adidas Superstars on feet], it's a Neighborhood shoe mixed in with our old brief and it's a very easy play and it's almost like a “welcome to the family” shoe that I made for myself for them to welcome me. [Laughs]
Like, hey, we're going to make the welcome to the family shoe, Edison. And they're sitting across the table like, “What do you mean?” I'm like, you guys welcoming me, but with Takizawa-san and Neighborhood.
No lie, the 35th anniversary of the Superstar was my rekindling with Adidas. I mean, it was crazy. Remember that? And this shoe was that shoe that I wanted. So being able to translate that on our first moment was just kind of poetic for me. It was the black pair with the skull and bones. The Superstar with the crocodile.
How did the Adidas conversation with Clot start this time around? How far back does that go?
I mean, we were looking for some new digs. I think our lens on how we wanted to move forward with footwear was very different from our previous partner. We wanted to create new things. We wanted to challenge ourselves. We didn't want to stay in a comfort zone, and somehow, some way Adidas allowed us to have that perspective.
Were you nervous about the challenge? You could easily just do colorways with whatever brand for the next 10 years and people would rock with it. How did you get to the point where you were like, “I have to challenge myself”? People aren't going to react to it the same way as if you just did a new colorway and put a logo on it.
There are many different factors that bought into us transitioning over to Adidas. I mean, leaks, so many things that were happening in the past that were like, this is not how we roll. This is not how we work. And the constant, “It's OK, it's OK, it's OK.” And it's not OK.
We found a partner that totally understands what we want to do. Look, nothing leaked. Crazy. And at the same time, I feel like the trend is changing a little bit right now. And I think that we caught it a little pre, before. The world's always about ups and downs, and I think that we're kind of hitting Adidas at the right time on the up. I mean, I would've never have been able to do anything like this anywhere else, to be honest with you.
It's also a huge commitment from them. Nobody else is giving you this much investment. You’re doing a collection, you’re not doing just a sneaker.
It's crazy. And I mean, if you talk about units-wise, we're top 10, top five, maybe. We move units, man. We move fuckin’ units—I think you know—and we need to be respected that way.
It's 20 years.
Exactly. We're not those dudes from over there that are cool. It's like, no, we are real players. We have real creative; we have real voice. Who can allow us to showcase that? And it just so happened to be Adidas.
I mean, no disrespect to Adidas or anything. We were talking to a lot of people: Li-Ning, Anta. Li-Ning is patriotic—do we do this like this? But we felt like the taste level, the capabilities, and the understanding of global culture was at Adidas. And a lot of people, I mean, even my staff at the beginning, I’m like, “Yo, this is happening.”
[Clot GM] Simon Wat was telling me he just switched over from Nike to Adidas yesterday.
I had a deep meeting with my team one day and I said, listen, guys, I don't care what you think on this issue; you have to believe me. And if you don't believe me, you shouldn't work in this company. So from today on, whenever I say any of this, you guys have to fist pump and just jump in the air, man. And slowly, over these past nine months, naturally, it's progressed into their DNA. And I feel like that's how the people are going to be too.
A lot of people are shocked and confused, like, “Why? Aw, man.” But they don't see what we see. And if they did see what we see, they'd be sitting here having this interview with you. I used to, but I don't really hear the noise anymore. I only see what I see, and I see a great future with Adidas and Clot. So hopefully the EDCeezy or the EDC shoe is going to pop up somewhere soon. And I'm excited to work on new creations and be inspired. I was uninspired and I was unmotivated at my previous digs, and I felt a little unappreciated.
You showed right away that you have new tools with Adidas. Like you said, this is stuff that you couldn't have been doing elsewhere.
I’m so happy, man. Nobody would've thought that this is what we're coming with. I mean, obviously the Neighborhood Superstar is very expected, I think, but that is more like a pre-appetizer. We're trying to be a little bit more sleek, a little bit more sexy. That’s where we’re going. It’s where it's going, man.
And if they can't see it's OK, because in two years, that's what they do, they'll follow. And I'm very confident in what we're making with Adidas. I feel like not only the shoes, the apparel. And the team that we have, we're going to kill it.
Being able to do the apparel thing is exciting too.
One hundred percent. And not like, it has to match the shoe. There's a dragon on the shoe, where's the dragon on the shirt? It's not like that. That's not how people dress anymore.
So I'm very appreciative of them to allow me to be like, hey, this is the shoe and this is the leader. But the conversation extends here in a way that doesn't have to be the same colorway. And that's how people dress now. Obviously some people still dress head to toe, but 80 percent of people don't.
And there are the moments, like the suit, where you do dress head to toe and this is how you're doing it. But the shoe is complementary to the clothes, and the clothes are complementary to the shoe. It’s not all one fabric.
I'm actually having a lot of fun with the apparel. If people, hopefully, tell Adidas that the apparel's cool, they let me do more and more and more. I want to do more. I want to do more apparel. I think shoe count-wise, I'm comfortable with what we have in the works, but I want to do more apparel. I think apparel is an easier way for people to be a part of what we're doing.
To buy into it.
Yeah. I think clothes are an easy thing where, especially with no logos, for someone that has nothing to do with Clot to wear Clot. And that's what I'm trying to do here.
The no-logo thing is a challenge to yourself again because it's established. You've been here 20 years, but let's convince people without that Clot logo.
I mean, I even had to convince the Adidas team that was the right thing to do. I was like, there's an Adidas logo, that's all. They’re like, “No, that’s…we're collaborating with you.” And I'm like, yeah, the silhouette is what we're doing for you. And hopefully it translates, man. Because, like I said, like the crochet piece, imagine a big “Clot” on the back. That's immediately 70 percent of the consumers that might want to wear that won't wear it.
So hopefully they'll still wear it and it doesn't have to scream Clot. But hopefully over time we'll win over some new fans. Just understanding that piece. “Oh, shit. Whoa, OK.” Someone might buy it and be like, “Oh, that's that Clot piece? Really?” And that's what excites me is the process of even our consumer learning something new. And even the die-hard fan, they might see this at first and be like [takes a deep breath], but I’m pretty sure that we'll be able to guide them into that wave.
