Parley X Sportswear X Running
Parley for the Oceans is an activist business that turns ocean plastic into yarn that can be used to make clothes. Adidas has a long partnership with Parley and, using the fabrics made from ocean plastic, I was asked to redesign the Parley X Adidas Activist Uniform and Mission kit. Together with a small team, I merged high performance running gear with lifestyle sportswear silhouettes for both Men and Women.
Global Seasonal Sportswear Inline Range
The Global Inline range was my day to day responsibility…I managed the design team to create 2 global inline ranges each year of around 100-150 models each season. Each season the range was broken up into different concepts and the below images represent a few of those concepts:
The Maker Phase
The Maker Phase is a pre design period in the seasonal calendar, where designers have the opportunity to experiment with ideas and use the Adidas Maker Lab to sample garments themselves. There is no business brief and it was my responsibility to manage the design team and direct raw talent and ideas into something interesting for the brand. In 2016, whilst working for the Adidas Originals team I set up the brands first ‘Dream Phase’ as it was called and sanctioned by the Creative director. I implemented the Maker Phase in Sportswear as an extension of the Dream Phase, showing that the concept can travel from team to team in an organization. Only some of the work below is directly mine…but I think it’s important to represent projects like this when presenting myself as a designer and design leader.
Future Icons
The Future Icons project was a defining project for the Adidas Sportswear Label. The brief was to redesign the classic Adidas ‘3 Stripe’ branded product for a younger generation. This project took on a special meaning for me as it was designed from the samples I made during our Maker Phase. I find designing something simple and timeless one of the most rewarding things I can do as a designer and I was happy with this outcome. Future Icons represents a large proportion of the Adidas Sportswear best sellers and is iterated at very democratic price points as well as at a more premium level. The range has now lasted 7 seasons with roughly the same design.
ZNE 2.0
The ZNE Hoody was/is an Adidas Sportswear franchise released in 2016, with an accompanying range, the design needed a revamp to keep consumers interested (according to market research) and so in 2019 I used the Maker Phase to re energize the original ZNE Hoody to create this new evolution.
I didn’t want to move the design of the hoody/collection too far away from the original, keeping clear design markers, absence of topstitching, modern performance feel and spacer fabrication, however I did want to bring something new and Iconic to the ZNE 2.0. The main difference between the original and the ZNE 2.0 is the cut lines and they are a clear indication of the attention I paid to reducing the most amount of waste as I could from the cutting process. I spent time working with the pattern cutters at Adidas to implement my ‘Tetris’ pattern efficient cutting theory and make it a reality in production. Our usage rate was at 93.5% for the hoody making it significantly more pattern efficient than any other hoody in the range and giving it the new classic cut lines and endless color blocking potential.
I decided to use the simplicity of a single garment franchise to tell the story of a new uniform, born from sporting codes and designed to be the uniform of a sustainable future. The ZNE was iterated in a number of colourways and adopted by many of the Adidas sponsored football teams for the Anthem Jackets, worn by the players on field before a game.
DISRUPTION / SOLUTION / DESIGN 