Stan Smith: 40 Years of Sole | Hypebeast

From a technical aspect, how has the sport changed? The approach to the game, has it changed significantly from your time in the early 70′s?

The racquets are totally different and the strings now allow players to hit the ball harder behind the baseline. When they’re in trouble they can hit winners. With older racquets you couldn’t do that.

So I assume you have to be less methodical these days, rather than planning your shots a bit more?

Yea, you had to plan the point a bit more in the past and couldn’t hit winners like you do now.

How did you originally get in touch with adidas?

My agent originally knew Horst Dassler, son of adidas founder, Adi Dassler. They were looking to get involved and increase their exposure in the United States as they weren’t very big in the States at the time. During that time, I was the number one player and they were looking for a particular player to represent them and my agent made the suggestion. They thought it was a great shoe and they had a shoe that Robert Hier (CHECK) had designed with Horst Dassler. I made a suggestion that the shoe they had designed was something I would like to put my name behind.

So, the shoe was mostly just your endorsement rather than you contributingany design elements to it?

Exactly, and this shoe when I first started wearing it, was a little different in the back but almost virtually unchanged from the original, 40 years ago.

How have contemporary designs changed since your original adidas Stan Smith model?

I’ve actually been wearing my shoe the whole time. What they’ve done is create some new updated tennis models along the way such as the Supreme with a little cushioning in the heel. In 2000, they made the Millenium, which has a thicker sole and a lot more cushioning.

Was the Stan Smith something you could wear over a variety of surfaces or better suited for a particular court?

The Stan Smith was something you could wear over clay and hard-courts. If you dragged your toe a lot, you could wear that out pretty quickly, goes without saying for many shoes. They made a special version for Wimbledon where they put three stripes on it (rather than the perforations) and put a herringbone bottom on it for the grass. All the players that were wearing adidas at the time got a few pairs and all the guys from adidas were wearing that shoe. There have been other evolutions of the shoe. They eventually brought back the original version in white with green highlights. Over the years they have created some more lifestyle versions with different materials and colors.