At this point, designing a solid Adidas sneaker is in Mark Gonzales’s DNA. And for the first time in their two-decade-long partnership, the artist and skateboarder known as “The Gonz” is taking on one of Adidas’s most essential silhouettes, the UltraBoost DNA. While the athlete typically sticks to sneakers fit for the skatepark, his signature design language now comes to running.
Boosting the Shmoo —
The Ultra Boost’s beige Primeknit upper is decked out in a camouflage-like print. Teal, navy blue, and black take over the splotched design with neon green appearing on the insole as a hidden accent. Gonzales has equipped his performance sneaker with his trusty Shmoo character, placing a couple of the happy/sad bird-ghosts on the toes and midfoot.
The UltraBoost DNA is a hybrid of past UltraBoost models, and it doesn’t completely compromise its performance elements for style. This iteration opts for a translucent black cage, a black midsole, and a grippy brown outsole to ground the design. To finish it off, the gray laces can be swapped for a louder neon green or orange.
Time to chill —
Gonzales has plenty of experience in the Adidas design lab, having taken on other classics like the Superstar. While his previous collabs have been made with his skate park performance in mind, the upcoming UltraBoost DNA is intended as a post-session chill shoe. “It was exciting for me to take on the UltraBoost because people who skate like a comfy shoe when they’re not skating,” Gonz said in a press release.
His Shmoo character, which resembles a ghost, was originally created by the skateboarder as a step back from “the complexity of art.” The Shmoo is almost always represented wearing a smile and a frown, which could be interpreted as a note of life’s duality. As with previous Gonzales-Adidas collabs, the sneaker’s tongue has been remixed with a co-branded “Shmoofoil,” a blend of the Shmoo and Adidas Trefoil logos.
A drop of Mark Gonzales’s Adidas UltraBoost DNA is set for June 11 on the Adidas website and select skate shops. It’s priced at $180, a steeper number than his previous pairs, but will probably strike the hearts (and wallets) of skaters and chillers alike.
