Kanye West's close friend and longtime barber, Ibn Jasper, took to Instagram to share a piece of sneaker history.
Apparently, several years ago, Kanye designed the adidas ZX 850—but for Reebok. Adidas then bought Reebok, and the design was later reworked as a David Beckham model. Although the ZX 850 looks like an O.G. adidas runner, it was first released in 2013—after the 2011 release of the DB ZX 800. If Kanye had designed this sneaker eight years ago, which would be 2006, the design would have been sitting in the tank for awhile.
Details of the situation that led to the shoe not releasing under Kanye's name remain unclear, but this revelation is pretty big news for the sneaker industry. Can you imagine the "what if" scenarios had 'Ye originally signed with adi? Whatever the situation, Kanye is with the Three Stripes now, and both parties' futures are as bright as ever.
UPDATE:
We reached out to Peter Jansson, co-owner of Sweden's Sneakersnstuff, and he explained this to us:
"The shoe that James Bond did for David Beckham was based on the ZX 800 (not the ZX 850), a shoe that was originally designed by Jacques Chassaing in the early-1980s. With that in mind, I figured that Kanye cannot possibly be the designer.
The ZX 850 is not an archive shoe, and it's based on the ZX 800 and the ZX 750 (based on the popular ZX700). It was product that adidas originally did for stores like JD sports and Foot Locker."
UPDATE:
Jasper has presented more evidence to back that Kanye really designed this sneaker along with another adidas model. Below are the Instagrams posted by Jasper:
Jasper also posted an email between himself and Kanye. It reads:
[via Ibn Jasper's Instagram]
