When Rick Owens announced that he was ending his partnership with Adidas back in 2017, it felt like the end of an era. The collab had begun four years earlier and quickly became one of the most influential designer-sportswear linkups out there.
Long before luxury brands were queueing up to team with sneaker giants, Owens had shown what was possible when a creative mastermind was given the freedom to build something entirely new. Instead of just repainting old classics, he created his own silhouettes from the ground up, from the beefy Mastodon to the sci-fi-coded Tech Runner.
So when those unmistakable Three Stripes appeared on the runway at Rick Owens’s spring-summer 2027 show in Paris yesterday, the reaction was instant. As the first look emerged from the sweltering Palais de Tokyo, there was an audible gasp from the audience. Nobody had expected it. But after an entire decade, Rick Owens and Adidas were really back—and in typical Rick fashion, the reunion was anything but quiet.
Adidas
The first looks featured inflated track jackets and matching shorts that were filled with air. Created using Adidas’ Climacool tech, each piece housed built-in fans that inflated the pieces while cooling the wearer. Together with an ice vest (originally developed to help footballers cope with the soaring temps of the 2026 World Cup), Owens described the system as a “personal air conditioning system.” Considering the French capital was pushing 100 degrees, the models were probably the comfiest people at fashion week.
The collection also nodded towards Japan’s fan jackets, which have become a common sight among construction workers during the country’s mega humid summers. “Fan jackets have battery powered aircon systems for workers to keep cool in summer,” writer Ashley Ogawa Clarke tells GQ. “It’s less about toughness or protection and more about agility and adaptation.” Whether Owens intentionally referenced them or not, the parallels were hard to ignore.
And yes, the sneakers looked just as mad. While Adidas hasn’t confirmed whether archival Rick Owens models will return, the runway made one thing very clear: there’ll be no shortage of crazy new designs here. An Adizero Adios Pro Evo appeared with a Lightstrike Pro midsole that was almost double (or triple) the usual size, while another model fused the brand’s Springblade cushioning system with a waterproof gaiter that stretched almost to the calf. OG fans will remember Owens experimenting with the Springblade back in the early days. And because this is the work of fashion’s Prince of Darkness, everything arrived in a palette of black and white.