Tra le sneaker simbolo del basket NBA a partire dalla metà degli anni ‘80 c’è senza dubbio la adidas Rivalry, lanciata nel 1986 ai piedi di Patrick Ewing. La stella NBA – due volte oro olimpico (Los Angeles 1984 e Barcellona 1992), introdotto nella Hall of Fame e undici volte All Star – ha fatto sì che il nome della Rivalry venisse associato in modo inconfondibile ai parquet di tutto il mondo, dagli Stati Uniti fino a quelli europei, diventando una silhouette simbolo di adidas e di tutti gli appassionati di basket.
adidas lancia ora insieme a Foot Locker una nuova campagna per raccontare un nuovo capitolo della Rivalry, dando la possibilità a tutti di vincere un seggiolino al più importante evento cestistico europeo: la final four di Eurolega.

adidas e Foot Locker portano la propria community dritta dove i grandi atleti si sfidano in Europa. Dal 29 marzo al 12 aprile 2023, acquistando un modello di Rivarly negli store Foot Locker di Via del Corso a Roma o di Corso Vittorio Emanuele II a Milano, sarà possibile partecipare al Rivalry Court Games. A ciascun cliente, insieme al paio di sneaker verrà rilasciata una cartolina da grattare, che potrebbe trasformarsi in un pass d’onore per il parquet della Eurolega.
Grattando la cartolina compariranno una serie di numeri, la sfida è quella di riuscire a totalizzare un numero uguale o maggiore a 12, se così sarà, potrete recarvi in cassa a chiedere il vostro biglietto per la competizione di basket più importante d’Europa, con ai piedi una sneaker che sui court è nata e con i quali continua ad avere un rapporto speciale.

Oltre a quelli già citati, gli altri store in cui sarà possibile partecipare al Rivalry Court Games sono: 
– Padova – Piazza Garibaldi, 11
– Bergamo – Orio Center, Via Portico, 60
– Como – Via Plinio, 13
– Roma – Via Ottaviano 1/3, Piazza del Risorgimento 22/26
– Torino – Shopville Le Gru, Via Crea, 10
– Napoli – C.C Giugliano In Campania, Via Santa Maria a Cubito
– Marghera – Via Pietro Arduino, 20

The campaign launched by adidas and Foot Locker to celebrate the Chile20 collection has come to an end. Made for the 1962 World Cup, the collection became an aesthetic manifesto for artists in the music scene and a true cultural phenomenon.
In 2023, the German brand is celebrating Chile20’s 50th anniversary, and for the occasion the stores in Via del Corso in Rome and Corso Vittorio Emanuele in Milan were involved, with an initiative that celebrated the past while looking toward a more inclusive future.

By shopping for a piece of the new collection, presented in the “Alumina” and “Chalk Brown” colorways, customers also received a special fanzine that gave a special prize to two customers. In fact, inside just one of these poster-zines for each store was a “golden ticket,”  that gave access to the drawing of a special sound box with a microphone, headphones and everything needed to listen to and record new music inside.
The new campaign by adidas and Foot Locker consolidated the link between the Chile20 collection and its community of fans. It also gave a new image to the iconic collection, telling a chapter of the phenomenon that paved the way for Hip Hop artists, allowing them to feel part of a movement that has expanded over the years, influencing creativity on many levels.

Last weekend Milan celebrated the 125th anniversary of Saucony, the “Original Running Brand,” which for the occasion told the story of Rod Dixon, an athlete who helped define the brand’s style and give birth to the DXN Trainer model – relaunched just in the past few days. 
The story of Saucony and the legacy of “The Flying Kiwi” – as Rod Dixon was also known – came straight to the heart of Milan, with an activation that saw a special takeover of the iconic newsstand in Piazza XXIV Maggio, posters put up on the streets of Milan and on a Sirietto streetcar that caught the attention of passersby. The Sirietto streetcar campaign, as well as the Digital and Social campaign, will be on air until the end of April.

Those who found themselves strolling in the Navigli area from March 24th to 26th could not help but be curious about the question “Who is Rod Dixon?”, which guided the entire guerrilla marketing activity in the city. The newsstand set up with posters, customized gadgets and a tabloid dedicated to the history of the athlete answered the curiosity, involving the entire community of fans and not also with a special DJ set by Sovltrippin, hosted just inside the newsstand on Friday evening. Throughout the weekend, visitors were able to learn about the history of a key figure for Saucony and the return of an iconic silhouette in the Originals collection, the brand’s division that repurposes classic running-derived models, reinterpreting them in a lifestyle key. 
The excitement around the DXN Trainer and Rod Dixon involved everyone from the most curious passersby to the many talents who attended the event, fascinated by a unique story.

One of my favorite parts of this work, I am talking about writing, is definitely the time devoted to research. At this stage, in addition to the predisposition to be extremely receptive-which is good for the mind but also good for the soul-you discover a wealth of anecdotes, facts and stories that you did not know beforehand and that surprise you with their uniqueness.
One of these stories (I make amends, I did not know it) is that of Azzedine Alaïa‘s rocambolic life, lived always and everywhere against the tide.

Azzedine Alaïa was a Tunisian couturier – woe to call him a designer, he did not like that definition – born in the capital of the North African country in 1935 to two farmers. Azzedine had a twin sister Hafida (a seamstress and who taught him how to use a needle and thread), whom he loved more than anything else in the world and who was his greatest source of inspiration for embarking on the path that would later become his life, along with reading Vogue, which a close friend passed to him under the counter.

Azzedine’s childhood in Tunis was simple, humble and at the same time rich from a sharing perspective. His mother left the family fairly early, his father worked practically all day cultivating the fields while he grew up with his grandfather, with whom he often went to the movies, and his grandmother, the other decisive figure in his life. From his grandmother he learned acceptance, openness and sharing. In fact, she used to welcome everyone into her kitchen, where she always cooked in larger quantities than the actual diners because if someone arrived at the last minute, they would still have their plate at the table.

He earned his first savings at a very young age by helping his midwife, Madame Pineau, in her studio where he used to leaf through Vogue. It was she who encouraged Azzedine to take up art studies. Indeed, he enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts in Tunis, at which he pursued the study of sculpture and began to take a greater interest in the forms of the human body.

Once he finished his studies, he decided to move to Paris with the very few resources he had managed to set aside and rented a very small apartment (a “chambre de bonne,” a typical Paris studio apartment), sharing it with a friend with whom he had left.

Having learned to use needle and thread very well, having delved into body shapes through his studies and being tormented, in the good sense of the word of course, by the draping and bias cutting of Madeleine Vionnet–surely one of the most decisive precursors of 20th century fashion–he found a job at Dior, where, however, he lasted only five days, the reason? Apparently they only let him sew the garment labels.
To earn a living he also began babysitting for wealthy women of Parisian mobility, such as the Marquise Mazan and the Countess of Blégiers. During his breaks, however, he sewed the dresses that those same upper-middle-class urban noblewomen regularly wore at social events.

Another great quality of his was affability. Thanks to his networking skills, as we would say today, he was able to build a network of friendships and connections that enabled him to expand his clientele and of course his fame in a very important way.
Among all the encounters of this period there is one that is more important than the others, the one with the German painter Christoph von Weyhe who would be his lifelong companion from then on, until the Tunisian couturier’s passing in November 2017.

His name began to turn and to become a certainty: he began to receive the most important women from Paris and elsewhere in his first atelier on the Rue de Bellechasse, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Léonie Bathiat aka Arletty, to name a few. He welcomed them into the kitchen, as his grandmother did with guests, and sewed the dresses directly onto the bodies, often forcing the clients/friends to stand for a long time, but they did so with joy.

“In order to know it (ed. the female body), one must love them, women, and be interested in them to the point of forgetting oneself”, Azzedine had of way to reiterate several times declaring his unconditional and sublime love for women.

He never wanted to enter the glossy and “official” world of fashion, as had done, for example, Saint Laurent or Pierre Cardin, he remained true to himself by disavowing the rules of the fashion world. He walked the runway when he wanted to and when he felt he was ready, never taking the calendar into consideration, he changed the status of models forever making them what they are today, superstars, think of a young Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell for example. 

He worked for Guy Laroche and Thierry Mugler but his being “against” never allowed him to compromise and thus submit to certain dynamics.
The last 15 years of his career have been difficult, first a deep oblivion and then a rebirth thanks to the Prada group, the Richemont group but above all his fraternal friend Carla Sozzani.

A simple, straightforward, sincere, consistent man with unparalleled talent, Azzedine Alaïa has left a crucial legacy for the entire fashion world.