Good morning, friends! Welcome back to The Kicks You Wear. Thanks so much for reading today. I appreciate you giving me a bit of your time. Hope you had a great weekend.
Wishing you all the best of luck up north with this blizzard, NYC. Luckily, we dodged the worst of it down here in D.C. It feels cruel to be hit with a historic blizzard just a month or so after we saw a historic winter storm in January. But, hey! At least you can actually build a snowman this time.
Quick hits:
Alright. Let’s get into it.
Adidas and Simone Rocha Pop Out for LFW
We’ve seen just about everything when it comes to the fusion of sports and fashion at this point. So many players have entered the intersection that it feels like the parties involved have run out of good ideas. But, every few months, there will come a collaboration or partnership that pushes boundaries just enough for you to wonder if there’s more ground here that’s worth exploring.
On Sunday, that’s how Simone Rocha’s collaboration with Adidas left me feeling.
What’s happening: Irish designer Simone Rocha started off London Fashion Week, debuting her namesake brand’s upcoming Autumn/winter 2026 collection. Tucked within it was a collaboration with Adidas.
- Rocha’s models hit the runway in these unique puffy Adidas track jackets, skirts, pants and long sleeves that combined the brand’s typical bow-and-lace infused looks with football fashion.
- There were interesting footwear pieces included, too. The collection included Adidas-branded ballerina flats, hard-bottoms, and calf socks with both Adidas and Rocha’s logos.
Why this matters: It’s always interesting when fashion decides to go in on sportswear. This is Rocha’s first big sportswear collaboration. She’s worked with brands tied to sports before, like Moncler, but this latest collection with Adidas feels like something a bit more rooted in the category — not necessarily from a performance standpoint, but a track jacket is just a bit more sporty than a Victorian-era-inspired bubble coat.
Between the lines: Adidas keeps a luxury collab on deck these days, doesn’t it? This latest with Rocha is obviously the brand’s big headline for fashion week here, and some might consider it a bit surprising. But moves like this one have become more the norm for the brand.
- The brand collaborates with luxury designers like Grace Wales Bonner, Nicholas Daley and more.
- Pharrell has been a long-standing partner with Adidas and is obviously a big player in the luxury world now, too.
We’ll have to wait and see where this new partnership goes. But with Wales Bonner leading up Hermès these days and Pharrell working at Louis Vuitton, it’s nice to see Adidas finding another high fashion collaborator to add to its roster.
The bottom line: Adidas plays in this circle as well as any brand does. It’s dominating the high-end fashion collaboration space in much the same way it dominated the celebrity collaboration space in the 2010s. There’s no Yeezy here, obviously, but the brand has put out a lot of good product in the space so far.
This Rocha collaboration won’t reach those heights, but it’s certainly a high-quality addition for the brand that will push the space forward.
Uniqlo Pulls Off the Upset
It looks like Nike is officially losing another tennis star.
What’s new: Uniqlo announced Emma Raducanu as its newest ambassador on Monday. It teased the announcement earlier in the day before fully revealing the news later.
Why this matters: Once this is made official, it’ll be yet another major tennis loss for Nike as the sport continues to boom. In just the last few years, the brand has lost:
- Francis Tiafoe to Lululemon
- Taylor Fritz to Hugo Boss
- Iga Swiatek to On
- Jack Draper to Vuori
Now, we add the United Kingdom’s top-ranked female player in Raducanu to that list. Those are some of the brightest stars in the sport. To lose them is no small deal — even if the brand does have three of the biggest stars at the top in Carlos Alcaraz, Janik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka.
Be smart: That offsets things a bit. But, at its best, Nike usually takes a comprehensive approach to these things. The brand dominates a sport by spending the money to be everywhere within it.
That’s clearly not the approach it’s taking these days with tennis.
Nike Gets In on Team USA’s Hockey Moment… Kind Of
Nike didn’t have an huge presence at the 2026 Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics. The brand (re?)activated ACG in some unique ways, but was otherwise mostly quiet.
That was until… Team USA’s men’s hockey team got an overtime win over Canada in the gold medal game on Sunday. That big win on the ice delivered Nike a moment it could finally be part of.
What happened: Following the game, the brand dropped a social media post celebrating Team USA’s big win.
- It used the tagline “No Miracles Needed,” which was a reference to the 1980s “Miracle on Ice” at the Lake Placid Games when Team USA pulled off an upset over the Soviet Union to win gold in 1980.
- Sunday’s gold medal game was 46 years to the day of the “Miracle on Ice.”
What’s extremely unfortunate and a pretty big blunder on the brand’s part is that you can’t actually purchase a Team USA jersey. The brand didn’t produce enough because the US wasn’t expected to win the gold, according to the New York Times.
Why this matters: Hockey is the highlight of the Winter Olympic Games and the biggest sport of the competition. Sunday’s win for Team USA was easily the biggest moment of these Games, considering the stage and that it happened on the very last day of the competition.
Nike’s flex on Instagram is a nice, unexpected moment for the brand that comes in part thanks to the IOC’s loosening of Rule 40. But not having the jersey available for purchase is a big missed opportunity.
Elliott Hill and company will lose sleep over this one.
Ilia’s Final Run
There weren’t too many straight-up fashion moments in the 2026 Winter Olympics this year. Plenty of brands were involved, but most of the gear we saw was technical rather than fashion-focused.
But for one last run… Figure skating sensation Ilia Malinin gave the fashion-forward crowd one last awe-inspiring look.
The performance itself was exhilarating. It obviously came after Malinin’s disastrous men’s single free skate performance, so the symbolism with the song choice and the hoodie were there. The jeans were a cherry on top. I have no idea how this man landed a backflip and did quads in denim and ice skates.
The casual look is normal for an exhibition skate. Skaters tend to use this opportunity to play around with outfits and go outside of the box. Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov wore a Kung-Fu Panda suit, for example. The rules are out the window here. The skaters are just putting on a good show for the audience.
What a show it was. I don’t know if I’m digging the denim or the panda suit more.
What’s Droppin’, Bruh?
This is a dedicated section detailing upcoming sneaker releases for the week, and sometimes other interesting drops I think you might care about.
Thanks for reading, gang!
If you have any questions, comments or concerns, reach out to me via email at michael.sykes@businessoffashion.com or shoot me a message @MikeDSykes via socials.
Peace and love. Be safe, be easy, be kind. We out.
-Sykes 💯
