Adidas Originals by Simone Rocha: “We Could Only Create This Together”

Ruffles and ribbons, trefoils and triple-stripes. Simone Rocha’s collaboration with Adidas Originals – launching today – proves a perfect marriage

This story is taken from the Autumn/Winter 2026 issue of AnOther Magazine: 

Simone Rocha has just returned from Florence, where she showed her first standalone menswear collection as Pitti Uomo’s guest designer.

We’re sitting in her east London studio. Stacks of photo books line shelves against white walls and a glass table is strewn with paper pinned with fabric samples. A jug of cold water sits on a sweet crocheted doily. 

Rocha is wearing an all-black look of her own making – a dress layered under a short-sleeved jacket with intricate beading at the chest – and backdropped by an enormous portrait from Perry Ogden’s 1999 Pony Kids series. A near-constant influence, this landmark photographic project provided specific inspiration for her Autumn/Winter 2026 offering and has been part of her creative lexicon for far longer than that, almost since she started, in fact.

Showing the collection on a Sunday afternoon in February, Rocha invited her audience to Alexandra Palace, north London, for the second time in seven years – she previously took over the faded Victorian landmark in 2019. Again, it was worth the trip. The grade II listed location – the theatre of the “People’s Palace” – was chosen by Rocha because she wanted the event to feel “performative, like a kind of parade,” she says. “I wanted to show in the round.” The venue’s ceiling is no less grand now than it was when it opened in the 1870s, despite its crumbling foundations and peeling paint. 

The monumental setting was fitting for a presentation that felt like a milestone: Rocha debuting a new collaboration with Adidas Originals. For its part, Adidas has always been trailblazing where designer collaborations are concerned, famously spearheading the movement with its groundbreaking partnership with Yohji Yamamoto – a fashion deity by any standards. In the form of Y-3, that relationship, which began with footwear in 2001 and launched a full collection of apparel the following year – continues today. More recently, the company has produced collections with Willy Chavarria and Grace Wales Bonner. In 2022, a much hyped capsule with Alessandro Michele, then at Gucci, sold out even before it hit stores.

By the time the Adidas Originals by Simone Rocha collaboration landed on the runway, it had been in the making for almost two years, with Rocha regularly commuting between her London home and the headquarters of Adidas, near Nuremberg. To the designer it felt like a natural partnership. Adidas is a brand she has been drawn to – and worn – since she was a teenager. 

“My first Adidas pieces were navy football shorts with three white stripes and the Trefoil logo, and I also had some popper tracksuit bottoms,” she says now. “I loved the way they grounded everything, made something very feminine feel a bit more tomboyish.” And so, sportswear isn’t so much a departure for this designer as another layer to her universe. “I knew from the start we had to create things that we could only create together,” she says. “It couldn’t feel like just Simone Rocha or just Adidas, with the other’s logo plastered on it. There had to be a balance.”

“I hate ‘newness’. It’s got to be one of the most overused words ... It makes everything that’s not new feel disposable, like an afterthought” – Simone Rocha 

The equilibrium is achieved in pieces that appeal to both sides – Simone Rocha devotees and Adidas geeks who may never have heard her name before. It was there in three-striped froufrou tulle gowns, in Beckenbauer tracksuit jackets with puffed sleeves, in lace trim featuring bow and flower-encircled Trefoils, and in sleek taekwondo sneakers, an excess of ribbons in place of their laces. For the show, triple-stripe-banded Adidas pieces were blended with formal wool tailoring and elaborate dresses, a distinct nod again to Ogden’s Pony Kids and the mix of casual sportswear and sharp school uniform documented in those exceptional portraits. Rocha wore that look herself when she was a younger woman in Dublin – and she still dresses that way today. 

Rocha describes the Adidas team as “incredible”, and says she felt lucky to be given so much freedom to experiment within the project. Of course, this is not the first time she has joined forces with a more mainstream name. Years spent working with Moncler on its Genius collections, as well as her acclaimed guest haute couture collection for Jean Paul Gaultier in 2024, mean that Rocha is adept at straddling different aesthetic identities, telling a story from two sides. “I love to be a guest. It’s nice to be wanted, isn’t it?” she says. “[Moncler, Gaultier and Adidas] were all completely different, which makes me appreciate Simone Rocha more. Whenever I come back here, I feel like I’m home.” 

As much as returning to the unrestricted freedom of her own label feels like a homecoming, it may also at times stifle. Since she launched Simone Rocha, the brand, over 15 years ago, the aforementioned ribbons, lace and florals have become synonymous with her name, a red thread running through her collections. “But I ask myself all the time when something becomes expected,” she says. “After the unravelling ribbon dresses” – the finale pieces of her February show – “I thought, no more ribbons, I’m done. But I can’t help myself. It comes in peaks and valleys. It’s almost like falling in and out of love.

“I hate ‘newness’. It’s got to be one of the most overused words,” she continues. “It makes everything that’s not new feel disposable, like an afterthought.”

Another word she resists is ‘romantic’. “I don’t want to say I’m made of stone, because I definitely design with my heart on my sleeve, but I’m actually a very unromantic person,” she says. “I’ve never described the collections as romantic. I understand why other people use it, but it’s not a word I’d naturally attach to what I do.” 

Disregarding what many may see as romantic, it’s the tension underlying Rocha’s work, and sometimes its strangeness, that make it so compelling. “There has to be a realism to the fantasy,” she says, the collaboration with Adidas being a prime example. “Sometimes that realism comes from taking something we already know and twisting it. Sometimes that isn’t enough and you have to create something genuinely new. It’s always a push and pull.” 

Hair: Kim Rance at MA+Talent using COLOR WOW. Make-up: Gemma Smith-Edhouse at LGA Management using CHANEL BEAUTY. Manicure: Lauren Michelle Pires using Le Vernis in Ballerina and La Crème Main by CHANEL BEAUTY. Casting: Julia Lange at Art Partner. Model: Noor Khan at Mikas. Studio art director: Molly Bridgwood. Studio manager: Sally Dawson. Digital technician: Ottilie Landmark Rasmussen. Lighting: ProLighting. Photographic assistants: Tomo Inenaga and Alex Bibby. Styling assistants: Isabella Damazio and Kitty Lyell. Production: KO Collective. Post-production: David Turner for MCD Creative

This story features in the Autumn/Winter 2026 issue, marking 25 years of AnOther Magazine, on sale internationally from 17 September 2026.