ADIDAS ORIGINALS BY WALES BONNER SS26 ARRIVES APRIL 17

Pony hair on a Gazelle Indoor. A basket-weave leather upper handcrafted in Brazil. A snakeskin Predator Elite. Wales Bonner does not describe materials in press releases; she selects them like a couturier chooses cloth. The Adidas Originals by Wales Bonner SS26 collection drops April 17, 2026. What arrived in the campaign imagery is less a streetwear drop and more a study in what happens when someone applies post-graduate material literacy to a sportswear catalog with a global distribution network. ## Karintha Basketry: Handwork That Earns the Price The centerpiece is the Karintha Basketry. The silhouette is the Karintha OG, a low profile that first entered the Bonner-Adidas vocabulary in past seasons. The SS26 version replaces the leather upper with a hand-woven basket-weave construction, produced in Brazil using traditional techniques from the Global South. The comparable luxury reference is Bottega Veneta's intrecciato weaving, a hand technique that carries a permanent price premium because it cannot be automated without losing the point. Black and white leather Karintha OGs also appear, with cognac leather toe caps, for those who want the silhouette without the craft premium. Both are honest about what they are. The Basketry is a piece made by hands that know what they are doing. The standard version is a very good-looking shoe. ## Pony Hair, Python, and the Gazelle Indoor Doing Something New The Gazelle Indoor in rattlesnake-embossed leather and dark brown pony hair are the catalog items most likely to move secondary markets. Pony hair on athletic footwear is a material choice that shows up in maybe three collections per year globally. It is temperature-sensitive, marks quickly, and ages differently than suede or nubuck. Anyone buying these for resale is missing the point. Anyone buying them to wear is making a commitment. The rattlesnake-embossed leather Gazelle Indoor continues the animal-texture thread that Bonner has developed across multiple Adidas seasons, each iteration pushing further into exotic finish territory without losing the low-clean silhouette that makes the Gazelle Indoor readable as a daily shoe. Distinct Wales Bonner contrast stitching runs across both models. ## The Adizero Gets Rebuilt for Fashion Logic The Adizero Adios is a performance runner that Brooks, Nike, and New Balance all have a competing version of. Wales Bonner takes the base mesh construction and adds leather stripes, suede accents, contrast stitching, and braided detailing. The result is a shoe that references running without being for it, which is exactly what the market between serious athletic and serious fashion has been asking for since 2021 when New Balance and Salomon demonstrated the appetite. The crinkle ripstop track jacket in off-white, hibiscus floral football jerseys, and interlocked twill track tops complete the apparel offering without asking for too much credit. Bonner has never been a full wardrobe architect. She does one or two apparel pieces per season that make sense as system pieces and lets the footwear carry the weight. ## April 17, 2026. One Collection That Cannot Be Faked The Adizero retails in the performance tier. The Karintha Basketry will carry the premium that hand production demands. The Gazelle Indoors are aspirational but not inaccessible. Wales Bonner and Adidas have built a vertical price architecture across this collection that gives three different buyers three different entry points, each one honest about its material proposition. That is harder to do than it looks, and nobody doing collaboration business at this scale is doing it better right now. The Karintha Basketry handcrafted in Brazil and the pony hair Gazelle Indoor available April 17 are the two items worth committing to before the pull date.