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There’s an image that has long left its mark on the minds of fashion enthusiasts: Phoebe Philo wearing adidas Stan Smiths, waving at the end of the Céline fall 2011 ready-to-wear show. The designer’s signature style was on display: A turtleneck, black slim-fit pants, and those distinctive white sneakers. A few years later, for the Céline spring 2015 show: The same look. Dressed in a beige round-neck sweater and impeccably cut black pants, Philo once again appeared in her Stan Smiths. The then-artistic director of Céline’s appearances were rare even then, but her stylistic aura had permeated the industry and set aesthetic codes for years to come and still to this day.
The Stan Smith is the best-selling sneaker of the last decade; today, it owes its popularity to the arbiters of style and culture who chose to adopt it. Named after the iconic Pasadena, California born tennis pro, Stan Smith once said: “Some people think I am a shoe.”
It’s really the first model to move from the world of sports to fashion, and the Stan Smith not only won over Phoebe Philo, but also Victoria Beckham. In 2016, on the streets of New York, the British designer appeared in a very Phoebe Philo look: She paired a navy blue turtleneck knit with gray suit pants, and the aforementioned adidas sneaker. And as the Stan Smith shoe did, Beckham was also able to traverse cultural inflection points successfully: From the bubblegum-pop phenomenon the Spice Girls to the high fashion space she occupies today.
Reclaimed by urban culture from the ’70s through to the 2000s, the Stan Smith then became a veritable blank canvas for many of the designers invited to reinterpret it. From Raf Simons and Pharrell Williams, to Yohji Yamamoto and Stella McCartney, plenty have turned to their own taste to reinvent the cult-followed sneaker.
And after a surprise discontinuation, they made a comeback in 2014. From trend forecasting and tracing cycles of style, we know the star pieces of an era tend to make a comeback 10 to 20 years later: And so it seems that in 2025, the time has come for Stan Smiths to regain its place in our wardrobes…To be continued.
