Adidas Adilette

Affectionately dubbed by the Süddeutsche as "the guilty Proll slipper," Adi Dassler invented the Adilette in 1963 for a reason. He owed it to athletes who wanted a shoe they could wear in the shower after changing. Thus, Dassler created the slide made of blue rubber with a contoured footbed and padded 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 finally to the sidewalk in front of the drinking hall in Kohlhaus, Fulda. The Adilette merged 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. However, we are now in 2011 and believe that it has mastered the style crisis.