Running through time

Bold designs and epic moments make up the 100-year history of Adidas in a new Taschen tome.

Before there was a glut of designer crossovers that defined the world of sneakerheads and hypebeasts, there were sports shoes that bore the stains, the tears, the repair tape, the grass smudges and the faded autographs of their remarkable sporting historical provenance and individual stories. Many of those were made by Adidas.

Brothers Adolf ("Adi") and Rudolf ("Rudi") Dassler made their first pair of sports shoes 100 years ago – and now, hundreds of innovative designs, epic moments and star-studded collaborations later, Taschen presents a review of the iconic sports shoe maker through more than 350 models, some never-before-seen prototypes and one-off originals.

As a way of customising his products to athletes' specific needs, Adolf Dassler asked them to return their worn footwear, with all the shoes eventually ending up in his attic. To this day, many athletes return their shoes to Adidas, often as a thank-you after winning a title or breaking a world record. That collection comprises the "Adidas archive", which photographers Christian Habermeier and Sebastian Jäger have been visually documenting in extreme detail for the last decade.

Along the way, we encounter shoes worn by West Germany's football team during its "miraculous" 1954 World Cup win and those worn by Kathrine Switzer when she ran the Boston Marathon in 1967, before women were officially allowed to compete. Then there are the modern-day wonders, with custom models for stars from Madonna to Lionel Messi, and collaborations with the likes of Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, Raf Simons, Stella McCartney, Parley for the Oceans and Yohji Yamamoto. The book also traces Adidas's trailblazing techniques, such as its use of plastic waste intercepted from beaches and coastal communities.

With a foreword by designer Jacques Chassaing and insightful texts, each picture tells us the why and how, and conveys the driving force behind Adidas. What we discover goes beyond mere design; in the end, these are just shoes, worn out by users who have loved them. But they're also first-hand witnesses to our sports, design and cultural history – and a highly fashionable one at that.