Close your eyes and picture the perfect white sneaker. Chances are, what comes to mind is a clean leather silhouette, a subtle off-white sole, a flash of green on the heel cap, and a little perforated detail running down the side. No logo overload, and no unnecessary bulk. Just a shoe that looks equally at home on a Wimbledon court, or your Sunday morning coffee run. That's the Stan Smith.
Few sneakers in history have outlasted trends, survived deliberate market withdrawal, collaborated with icons across sport, fashion, and pop culture, and still feel fresh with every new iteration. This summer, Livestock is proud to revisit a heritage icon and it’s time to dig deep and understand why we keep coming back to this shoe.
The 1960s: It Didn’t Start With Stan
The Stan Smith's begins not with a man named Stan, but with a French tennis star named Robert Haillet. In the mid 1960s, adidas set out to design a dedicated tennis shoe in collaboration with Haillet, a respected player on the European circuit. The result was a genuine step forward in athletic footwear design known simply as the “Haillet”.
The Haillet was built with the athlete’s comfort in mind with a breathable construction, a supportive fit, durable derby-cut leather offering more longevity than other competing shoes of the era. The now iconic perforated three stripes along the side profile were not just design flourishes, but a genuine ventilation system to keep the player’s feet cool during play — purposeful, determined, and beautiful.
The 1970s: The Man Behind the Legend
In 1971, Robert Haillet had retired from his professional career and the brand needed a name that carried the same weight on an international stage. Enter Stan Smith — a charismatic tennis player who claimed Wimbledon in 1972, won the US Open that same year, and rose to world number one.
After a meeting with Horst Dassler, head of adidas France, the partnership was sealed, and in 1973, the first shoes bearing Stan's name hit the market. In a respectful nod to the shoe's history, for the next five years it carried both names — sold as the 'Stan Smith – Haillet' — with Stan's image printed on the tongue of the shoe. By 1978, the Haillet name was quietly removed, allowing the Stan Smith to stand on its own as we know it today.
The 1980s and 1990s: Breaking Records
By the 1980s, the Stan Smith transcended the sport that created it and proved to be irresistible beyond the grass courts of Wimbledon. Sneakerheads adopted the minimal silhouette, and subcultures claimed the iconic white-and-green colourway. Towards the end of the decade, the shoe had sold a record breaking 22 million pairs, landing adidas and the Stan Smith in the Guinness Book of Records.
The 2000s: Scarcity as Strategy
In the early 2010s, adidas had to learn a tough lesson — ubiquity is a slow poison for cool. So after two decades of near-unstoppable momentum, adidas made a bold and counterintuitive move: they took the Stan Smith off the market entirely. The shoe’s availability had dulled its' desirability. adidas’ response? Deliberately creating scarcity. For two years, no new Stan Smiths hit the shelves. The shoe made its return on its own terms: the 40th anniversary in 2013, and nothing short of a spectacle.
100 limited editions, each endorsed by a different celebrity with a Stan Smith story to tell. From Beckham to Pharrell, from the tennis court to the pages of Vogue Paris, the shoe made one thing undeniably clear — it never belonged to just one world.
The 2010s: A Fresh Canvas
The early decades of the Stan Smith were defined by athletic credibility, the 2010s were defined by reinvention through collaboration. The shoe became a canvas and some of the most creative minds in fashion were eager to pick up the brush.
Raf Simons brought architectural minimalism to the silhouette. Pharrell Williams experimented with colour, texture, and materials. Stella McCartney lent her signature sustainable sensibility to the design. And in one of the more joyful left-turns in sneaker history, Kermit the Frog got his own edition, complete with his famous line — "It's not easy being green" — printed on the heel caps.
Some things never go out of style. It’s now 2026, and the Stan Smith still holds its own in a market that’s inflamed with saturation.
Throughout decades of global success, the silhouette has felt the grounds of Wimbledon, experienced hundreds of collaborative variations, reached record-breaking movement, and remained one of the most—if not the most—iconic sneakers of all time. The history is second to none, a timeline like that is simply untouchable.
Today’s return of the Stan Smith marks another milestone in the adidas lineage, one that will be written about decades from now when the sneaker will undoubtedly still be at the benchmark of success.