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In the sneaker world, popularity is often directly correlated with newness and rarity. The ruthless logic of hype dictates that the harder a sneaker is to get, the more desirable it is.
Which made it particularly surprising that this summer belonged to an unassuming mass market sneaker developed over 70 years ago: the Adidas Samba.
In a men’s fashion landscape riven by flash-in-the-pan microtrends and TikTok-engineered memes, the Samba trend is pleasantly real and surprisingly universal. Earlier this summer, when I met up with a half dozen friends at a downtown NYC bar after work, I counted four sets of Sambas under the table, including my own beat-up white pair, which I bought for about $75 last year. We all work in the fashion world, or close to it—but in this case it felt like we were actually late to the party. By then, I was seeing Sambas everywhere: on the feet of tourists in Soho, who wear them instead of hefty walking shoes, but also on bankers in Midtown, who have seemingly moved on from Allbirds. In those early summer days, the Samba looked as part of the city’s urban fabric as the Nike Air Force 1. Perhaps most strikingly, they provided a rare moment of consensus: we all agreed, more or less, on what a cool shoe looked like.
This wasn’t just a regional trend. The Samba is thought to be one of Adidas’s consistently best-selling models, but according to Drew Haines, the merchandising director of sneakers & collectibles at sneaker resale site StockX, demand jumped sharply in June and July. “In the last two months, we’ve seen almost the same number of Samba sales as we did in the prior five months (January through May 2022) combined,” says Haines. (Adidas declined to comment on sales figures.)
At press time, the Three Stripes was sold out of many sizes of its standard Samba models. Underlining the surge in demand, StockX has facilitated some truly staggering sales in recent weeks. In mid-August, StockX sold a pair of basic white Samba OGs, which retailed for $100, for $513—around what a rare Air Jordan collaboration might go for, rather than a mass-produced design that’s also available on Zappo’s. (Samba collaborations have been bullish on StockX, too, with a special LAFC edition going for a 200% price premium on average since January.)
The Samba has traveled an undulating road to the peak of our collective style consciousness. Introduced in the 1950s by Adidas founder Adi Dassler, the original Samba looked more like a hiking boot than the low-profile sneaker we know today. Dassler’s important innovation was the gum outsole, which was developed to help soccer players maintain their footing on icy pitches. Over time, the Samba slimmed down and became a favorite of indoor soccer players, and by the ’90s, its clean silhouette and signature brown sole was crossing over into the proto-streetwear scene. In the UK, it took off among football-adjacent Britpop fans (Oasis is often credited with embracing the Samba, though they generally favored the similar Gazelle model), and in the US, SoCal kids discovered that it was also a great shoe to skateboard in.
The new generation of Samba fans have been drawn to this deep well of nostalgia. Fashion stylist Ian Bradley initially recognized the sneaker’s roots in Jamaica’s football-obsessed reggae scene. “It’s Bob Marley-ish for me,” says Bradley, who has had a pair or two in his footwear rotation since 2004. Over the years, he realized that the understated Samba evoked a particularly strong—even emotional—response in other people. “The thing about wearing the shoe, especially when it’s not on trend, is people remember it. They’d be like, Oh, I forgot, I used to have a pair of those for soccer practice. It’s more of a rekindling than a reaction,” Bradley says.
One of those people was Jonah Hill, who designed his own pair of Sambas for Adidas in 2020. “I’ve worn [the Samba] since probably I was 11 or something—it’s always been my favorite shoe,” he told GQ at the time. “I would wear them from when I was super into soccer when I was nine or 10, and then through skateboarding.” Hill, who in the past few years has served as a style avatar for young men dipping their toes into menswear, found that the Samba fit neatly into his new tasteful sensibility. “I never lost affection for just how it looks,” Hill said. “They look great with shorts, they look great with pants. They’re just a beautiful shoe that isn’t too tech-y or futuristic.”
To 24-year-old Tanner Dean, the Samba represents something of a holy menswear grail. Dean is by no means a sneakerhead—when he moved to New York from Oregon several years ago, his footwear rotation consisted of boots, loafers, and derbies. Then, in 2020, Adidas Originals collaborated with one of the hottest rising stars in fashion, Grace Wales Bonner, on a line of Sambas with subtle crochet detailing. If the Samba had already begun to catch back on, now it was truly primed for takeoff. “I’ve been into smaller brands like Wales Bonner for a while, so I was reintroduced to the Samba on a fashion level and instead of on a purely functional level,” says Dean, who missed out on a coveted brown pair from the collab that now sell for many hundreds of dollars on the secondary market. When another round dropped earlier this summer, Dean jumped on a white and green suede pair. “It’s versatile, but it’s also a recognizable silhouette for a lot of people,” Dean says. “It’s literally the don’t-think-about-it shoe.”
Dean now shows off his Sambas on TikTok, where he’s had a front row seat to the sneaker’s explosion into a full-on viral Internet trend. That’s thanks, in part, to celebrity adherents like Frank Ocean, A$AP Rocky, Bella Hadid, and Hailey Bieber. “This is the Samba’s moment right now” on TikTok, Dean says. “There’s a lot of people that really get into a shoe that everybody else is getting into,” he adds, noting that the platform’s men’s fashion fans are more drawn to the Samba’s central role in the soccer-adjacent #blokecore trend (40+ m views) than its relationship to influencers or celebrities.
As with every modern internet trend, especially one tied into a trend like #blokecore, the Samba now has its fair share of haters. Some now refer to it as the “It girl sneaker.” Dean even jokingly calls his own beloved pair the “Instagram explore page” sneakers.
Generally speaking, nothing destroys a trend faster than self parody, but signs abound that the Samba will remain the sneaker that we (or most of us, at least) can agree upon. On Monday night, Harry Styles performed at Madison Square Garden wearing a candy-striped Gucci overalls and Dorothy-red Adidas x Gucci Gazelles—the Samba’s close cousin, luxxed up for movie premiers and sold out shows. Harry’s House was a Three Stripes affair: Dev Hynes, who opened the show with a rare performance as Blood Orange, wore baggy jeans and…a pair of beat up black Sambas. Styles looked fabulous, while Hynes, in his regular guy soccer shoe, looked simply and undeniably cool.
Bradley, for one, says he doesn’t mind the Samba’s sneaky popularity. “Anything trend-heavy, I usually avoid, because that’s a marker of personal style, you know?” he says. “But I don’t think I’ll stop wearing Sambas just because they’re trendy. When I see someone wearing them, I just think they have good taste.”
