The demand for the shoe has had a hectic energy, unsettling the older Samba wearers who still see it as a trusty, low-cost beater sneaker. Maybe less beaten to death and more trampled in a stampede. Hailey Bieber sporting a pair of vegan Sambas earlier this year. CEO Bjørn Gulden declared on a March earnings call that the Samba was the “hottest shoe on the market,” and that the company intends to sell “millions and millions'' of pairs by “heating up” the sneaker franchise quarter over quarter. Adidas itself has signaled its plans to fan the flames on their 76-year-old design, a needed source of profit as the company looks to fill a $2 billion hole post Yeezy. Hundreds of millions of TikTok views tallied under #adidassamba, and Shanghai played host to a Samba-only pop-up this spring. The $100-dollar black OG Sambas, and its vegan counterpart, were reportedly sold out, for a time, on the Adidas website. The Samba closed out 2022 as one of the hottest items in fashion, leading to a shortage earlier this year. One afternoon this past week, at the intersection of Prince Street and Broadway in Soho, I observed white vegan Sambas being worn, simultaneously, by young New Yorkers on all four corners. The Samba’s popularity is still surging with no signs of slowing down. What’s perplexing about the Samba moment is its persistence. That the Samba will be the “It” shoe of this approaching summer-as it was last summer and the one before it-seems to be a given. We’re in the calm, pre-summer days before a string of coveted collaborations for the ever-versatile soccer sneaker are set to drop (including a sixth linkup with Wales Bonner, expected in early June). Right now might be the moment to address the subject behind one of the more perplexing trend cycles bestowed on us in recent memory: the Adidas Samba.

Adidas samba adv mens brown sole