DECADE: 10 Years of adidas Spezial - Event Recap
adidas are undoubtedly leading the market at the moment, with over 70 years of innovation and icons to work with and tap back into whenever they need to. One of the franchises that has helped bolster the brands appeal, especially amongst the ‘enthusiast’ community is Spezial, which this year celebrates it’s 10th Anniversary.
Over the course of the past decade, Spezial has created hundreds of new footwear silhouettes that take inspiration from some of the more obscure, far reaches of the adidas footwear archives. Curator Gary Aspden himself has over 3000 pairs within his personal collection, from a collecting ‘career’ that probably spans around the 40 year mark; so inspiration for the collections has come from myriad of sources ranging from terrace and football culture, to hip hop and breaking.
Spezial has been a way for the brand to bring back elements of long forgotten shoes that a select few will remember, and transform and update them for the modern day crowd who may be completely unaware of the origins. With production methods changing over the years and moulds for shoes being destroyed over time, it’s incredibly hard to get a lot of 1-to-1 renditions of shoes that a lot of the collecting community have been screaming out for. Spezial caters to this lust by creating a unique product offering for those that know. If you’re a regular viewer of Gary’s Instagram account, he’ll always give a great insight into the development and storytelling behind each product thats been made, and sometimes a bit of insight about the naming conventions behind some of them.
In Exhibition form, the Spezial concept was first displayed back in London in 2013, with a curated exhibition of shoes collated from several very respected adidas enthusiasts, as well as hundreds from Gary’s personal collection. Ive since been to two further iterations of the showcase in Manchester in 2014 (where the first collection actually launched), and Gary’s hometown of Darwen in 2019.
This latest version however took a retrospective look at the past 10 years of the franchise, with a takeover of an old shopping unit in Darwen once again, where it all started for Aspden all those years back. The exhibition showcased every piece of footwear from multiple seasonal drops since the starting point back in 2014, as well as a huge case full of prototype samples that give you a real insight into the production process of actually creating a shoe. Unless you work within the industry, it might be hard to comprehend just how many different versions of a product are sampled and tweaked before you hit the sweet spot and product a final version every party is happy with. Some might seem like quite insignificant changes, but this is where the meticulousness of Spezial really comes into it’s own.
There were of course still a couple of cases worth of archival gems plucked from personal collections, that were key sources of inspiration to help inform the aesthetic of many of the products in each range. Another important element of Spezial thats worth mentioning (and Terrace culture itself) is the outerwear. The upstairs floor of the unit was filled with display cases highlighting some of the most important jackets from each season, complementing the accompanying footwear from collections perfectly. Also on display were some of the 3rd party partnerships that appear every now and again within Spezial ranges, one important one for example was 2020’s team-up together with New Order.
As well as Gary’s curation of the whole project, it’s important not to forget other vital figures who have been involved from the outset. Mike Chetcuti, Robert Brooks, and graphic designer Gary Watson have all been heavily involved throughout; contributing advice, rare shoes from their own personal collections, or creative production of the rest of the campaign photography and assets that also help to build out the Spezial world in its entirety.
Gary’s connection to culture professionally began around 25 years ago when working within Entertainment Marketing at adidas, connecting the brand with relevant music icons of the time and getting the stripes visible in the right places, at the right times. Music has been a mainstay theme of Spezial throughout it’s lifetime, and many talents who have featured with campaigns came down to the exhibition throughout the week. Opening night saw Steve Jones from The Sex Pistols, Bernard Sumner from New Order, and Goldie, who ended up playing the Private View Afterparty. I brought my sketchbook in anticipation of bumping into him and managed to get one of his iconic handstyles scribed for my personal archive.