The adidas Superstar 82 is All About the Details
Despite hitting the ripe old age of 50 back in 2019, the never really got the big birthday party it deserved. In a case of better late than never, the venerable model has had another revamp that’s a bit more accurate to archival versions – though to the average eye it might not look like anything’s changed at all.
This is the Superstar 82, which aims to replicate the exact shape and proportions of the model when it was still made in France. There still exists on the market the Superstar 80s that was filling the role, but designer Chris Law was determined to create an even closer version as his final project at the Three Stripes.
Elements like the thin unpadded tongue and smooth (but still lightly textured) shell toe are essential, but dimensions and proportions have been tweaked to fractions of a millimetre to be just the originals. Even the angle of the stripe branding and where they sit relative to the eyelets has been rectified. Those are still fairly tangible and relatively macro amendments, but consider the painstaking effort it took to even get the bumpy surface of the midsole to look like it left the adi factory 40 years ago, as opposed to a cookie-cutter repeating pattern. Then to scale it up to commercial production quantities.
To appreciate this level of detail, cop a pair of the Superstar 82 directly from adidas.