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It might sound silly, but in 2018, that question is monumentally important. The Harden Vol. 3 is nominally a basketball sneaker—but sneakers today cover much more ground than the basketball court. They pop up on runways and fuel sales for department stores and luxury designers. “Culturally, things are a lot different from how our parents went from work, where sneakers are acceptable now,” says Williams.
Adidas understands this as well as any brand—it collaborates with artists like Kanye and Pharrell as well as designers like Rick Owens and Raf Simons. There’s no longer a division between fashion and sneakers in the mind of consumers or designers, so why shouldn’t those worlds collide on an Adidas basketball shoe too? That’s why, before Harden put on the shoe and ran around in it, he needed to know if it had swag, bro. The first model, for the record, got an enthusiastic yes—the room filled with excited suggestions of future colorways and visions of different player exclusive models.
The Harden Vol. 3, the third signature shoe to come out of the Houston Rocket star’s signature line with Adidas, considered style from the very beginning. This was a requirement for the GQ cover star. “He lives in both [the fashion and sports] worlds,” says Williams. “That was one of the things we wanted to make sure we addressed.”
So what does it take to pass Harden’s swag test? “He loves high fashion. He loves really bold blocking and graphics,” Williams says. During the design process, the pair would text back and forth, or Harden would pull up references he wanted to see in future shoes. One day, Harden loaded Instagram and showed Williams a bunch of Versace T-shirts he was feeling. Williams promises we’ll see the Versace-inspired shoe later on down the road.
But the point of the Harden Vol. 3 is that whatever the Beard is into—whether that’s those tees or a special-edition shoe for Houston—this shoe was constructed to soak all that up. "We do look to see how we can dimensionalize the shoe and it can transition to be able to give different looks to consumers," Williams says. The lace band running across the upper is meant to keep Harden secure, but it’s also a canvas for interesting design or loud colors. Same goes for the toe reinforcement. The current black and grey colorways are inspired by space because Harden plays for the Rockets in the same city NASA is headquartered—but also because he creates space on the floor. So the upper sparkles like a night sky and the band is dotted with plus signs meant to represent stars.
The shoe’s versatility is key heading into a season in which players and sneaker brands will be afforded more creativity than ever. The NBA recently announced that it would no longer ban players from wearing only team-color sneakers. The development will lead to all sorts of wacky on-court colorways. (Like, say, one inspired by the colors and graphics of Versace.) The rule change created a stir at Adidas. “We've been working fast and furious to get something together,” Williams says. “I've been pushing the team to get something out there we think he's going to love.”