The adidas Stan Smith Wore Another Man's Name for Years

On July 9, 1972, Stan Smith beat Ilie Nastase of Romania in the Wimbledon final. He was the best player in the world that year, a tall Californian with a moustache. The white leather shoes on the court that summer would one day carry his name. At the time, the name printed on that adidas shoe belonged to a Frenchman who had already retired.

A Leather Shoe for a French Pro

Tennis shoes in the early 1960s were mostly canvas, and canvas wore through quickly on court. Horst Dassler, the son of adidas founder Adi Dassler, is credited with the idea of making one in leather instead. Sources put the first adidas leather tennis shoe in 1963 or 1964, which is the kind of disagreement that follows any shoe this old. The build was simple, a white leather upper on a pimpled rubber outsole, and the early pairs were made in Landersheim, in northeastern France.

In 1965 adidas put a player's name on it. Robert Haillet was born in Pau in 1931, won the Monte Carlo championships in 1958 and 1959 and played Davis Cup for France through the 1950s. He turned professional in 1960, joining Jack Kramer's touring troupe, and he was one of only two French tennis professionals at the time. The shoe became the adidas Robert Haillet, and in 1967 it got a padded heel to protect the Achilles tendon.

The most important design decision was what it left off. Every other adidas shoe wore three stripes stitched to the side. The Haillet carried them as three rows of small perforations punched into the leather, which kept the side panel smooth and clean. The adidas Superstar made the stripes loud. This shoe whispered them, and that restraint is a big part of why it has outlived most of its rivals.

Stan Smith Takes Over the Tongue

Haillet retired in 1971, and adidas needed a new face. It also wanted a bigger share of the American market. Donald Dell, the tennis agent and manager, pointed the company toward Stan Smith. Smith had won the US Open in 1971, the Wimbledon title followed in 1972, and by the end of that year he was the top ranked singles player in the world. He also played on seven Davis Cup winning teams for the United States between 1968 and 1981.

adidas did not rename the shoe right away. From about 1973, Smith's portrait sat on the tongue while the word Haillet stayed printed above it, so for several years the shoe effectively carried two names. Only in 1978 did adidas drop Haillet and officially call it the adidas Stan Smith. Most people who bought a pair in the decades since have never heard of the Frenchman who wore it first.

The tongue portrait itself has changed over time. Some earlier versions showed Smith without his moustache, and current pairs show it. Early pairs came with either a grass green or a blue heel tab, and collectors pay a premium for the ones made in France.

Twenty-Two Million Pairs and a Record

The Stan Smith did not need a new champion to keep selling. It moved from tennis courts to everyday wear, helped by the same instinct that made the Converse Chuck Taylor a sidewalk shoe, a sports shoe plain enough to wear with anything. By 1988 adidas had sold about 22 million pairs, and the shoe was listed in the Guinness World Records for that total. Some later accounts date the record to 1991 instead.

The numbers kept climbing after that, though they get harder to pin down. Wikipedia cites more than 30 million pairs over the shoe's life. In 2022 the Los Angeles Times reported that adidas had sold more than 100 million Stan Smiths over 50 years, a much bigger figure that is worth reading as that paper's count rather than a settled total. Whatever the true number, the shoe sits at the top of the adidas sales table. Our Samba history notes that the company ranks even the Samba second behind it.

Along the way the shoe picked up variations. Some versions from the mid-1990s swapped the laces for hook and loop straps. A Stan Smith II appeared around the turn of the century, and a Stan Smith 80s replica joined the adidas Originals line in 2008.

The Shoe adidas Took Away

By the early 2000s sales had slowed, and the shoe had become so common that it was easy to ignore. In 2011 adidas did something unusual for a company with a best seller. It stopped selling the Stan Smith and bought back as much stock as it could from retailers. The plan, as Smith later recalled to the Los Angeles Times, was to bring it back after two years.

The gap was not empty. As Complex reported, adidas kept the shoe away from general release while it worked on its image, making personalized pairs with custom tongue logos for a small group of people, including A$AP Rocky and the designer Jeremy Scott. Phoebe Philo, then the creative director of Céline, was seen in a pair in Paris, which helped the shoe with a fashion audience that had never thought of it as a tennis sneaker. Sources date her moment differently, from 2010 to 2015, so treat it as part of a slow build rather than a single night.

The return came on January 15, 2014. adidas gave pairs to 100 influencers, each with that person's own photo printed on the tongue in place of Smith's. A shoe that had been everywhere was suddenly something people waited for. Collaborations with Raf Simons, Pharrell Williams and others followed and kept it in front of a new generation.

Why It Still Works

The appeal is the same thing that made it unusual in 1965. There is no stripe on the side, no visible branding beyond a small heel tab and a face on the tongue. It is a clean white leather shoe with a low profile, close to the ground in the way the Nike Cortez is, and it sits as easily under tailoring as it does with a white T-shirt and raw selvedge denim.

The Wikipedia entry on the adidas Stan Smith keeps a detailed timeline of its model numbers and sales figures, and Complex has the full account of how adidas brought it back. For more, see sneaker history, heritage brands, our adidas hub and the Quiet Menace sneakers section.

Look closely at the side of a new pair. The three stripes are still there, punched through the leather as rows of holes, the way they were on a Frenchman's shoe in 1965.