Adidas Adilette

Affectionately dubbed by the Süddeutsche as "the guilty pleasure of the proletariat," Adi Dassler invented the Adilette in 1963 for a reason. He owed it to athletes who wanted a shoe they could wear not just in the locker room but also in the shower. Thus, Dassler created the slide sandal made of blue rubber, featuring a contoured footbed and a cushioned strap. Side suction cups provided the necessary grip, along with the iconic three white stripes. At the time, Dassler could not have predicted that the Adidas slide would quickly leave the sacred spaces of Olympians and conquer the sauna landscapes of ordinary citizens. It made its way from there to camping sites, the streets of small German towns, and eventually to the sidewalk in front of the drinking hall in Kohlhaus, Fulda. The Adilette became synonymous with us Germans and tarnished our reputation. It led our neighbors to believe that we are perpetually on vacation, only getting off the couch to grab chips. But now, in 2011, we believe that it has mastered the style crisis.