Good to see you back Alex, but on this issue I disagree completely.
Steps for Adidas:
1. Acquire vintage shoe, let's use the Malmo as an example.
2. Remove upper from sole and then unstitch all thread. Now the template of suede, etc. can be reproduced using the component parts of the OG.
3. Make mould from existing vintage sole. Scale up and down using conventional techniques.
And now a one to one model can be replicated - although admittedly not neccessarily with the same materials/ compounds.
Many of the faults and/or complaints about current issues of classic shoes are similar no matter what the model is. For example, modern shoes seem to be 'chunkier', they don't look as slender/ sleek as their vintage counterparts. Yet, when the SL72 look chunkier, then the Malmo look chunkier, then the Beckenbauer look chunkier, it becomes obvious that this occurrence needs to be taken into account for other models in future production.
Fastforward to now. Achill get rereleased. How do they look? Chunkier.....
Another example would be the poor dye with no richness to the tones. Back in the early '80s Adidas were high quality disposable footwear whereas Nike were poor quality and only really desired for their rarity. Fast forward 30 years and Nike retros are far superior to Adidas now. How is it that reissued Nike runners seem to have much richer dyes than Adidas?
How about the continual degradation of suede and leather on later runs of a given model. Why does the leather get worse on every issue of Forest Hills, or the suede get worse on every issue of Trimm trab? That surely can't be because of a lack of 1:1 reproduction capability or an inability to replicate tools and machinery.
Why do Adidas' vintage runner reissues such as TRX or ZX500 appear to be relatively accurate (if not actually perfect) when a simpler design (of more luxurious material) such as Malmo or Tobacco is not?
Nineteen years ago the Slovenian SL72 reissue was still using the correct dimpled tongue. Only three years later the Trimm Trab was using an inferior tongue. Are we to believe that within that timeframe it became impossible to manufacture dimpled tongues, or is it that Adidas felt it was a place they could cut costs with little to no-one noticing?
But that run of Trimm Trab was also using a PU sole and production of PU models was still occurring just twelve years ago. A noticable difference was that those Trimm Trab were also made in Europe.
I would like to point out that PU soles appear in catalogues from 1975 which means Adidas were able to produce them over a twenty-four year period at bare minimum, and that with a few years gap in production starting around 1989.
In Britain we have a phenomenon known as a 'chav'. This is someone who wears branded clothes not because they are high quality or good or even because they like them, but because they are popular, expensive, and/or possibly considered good by other people.
Chavs purchase branded clothes because they believe it will unconditionally give them status.
For me that describes exactly what much of the Adidas output caters for nowadays, people who buy the product based on a brand name or association, and not people who buy the product because it is high quality or even nice. A case in point would be the Trimm Trab over the last decade which don't even look nice, and that's before we start to account for their lack of quality.
Yet people were buying them, and the only explanantion I can give is that they were buying them because they had 'Trimm Trab' written on the side - because they certainly weren't buying them because they looked nice.....
Just my tuppence.....
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