Adidas and Kith’s second collaboration of 2025 lands with a bigger stage presence - calling in Paul Pogba and Paulo Dybala, two players who embody football’s crossover into fashion and lifestyle. The collection taps into France ’98 aesthetics with flame artwork, pinstripes and archive silhouettes, bridging the nostalgia of late-90s World Cup jerseys with today’s streetwear ecosystem.
For Adidas, the partnership reasserts its dominance in the football-lifestyle space, while for Kith it strengthens the brand’s credentials as a global cultural curator beyond New York hype cycles. Pogba and Dybala, both recognised as much for their off-pitch fashion choices as their on-field brilliance, bring credibility to the campaign in ways few athletes can.
📊 Supporting Stats
Retro football is big business: resale platform StockX reported a 200% year-on-year growth in searches for vintage Adidas jerseys in 2024 (StockX, 2024).
The global licensed sports merchandise market is projected to reach $34.6 billion by 2027 (Statista, 2025), with retro-inspired kits and lifestyle collabs driving growth.
Athlete influence matters: research from Nielsen (2024) shows 56% of Gen Z consumers follow athletes for fashion inspiration, blurring the line between sportswear and streetwear.
🧠Decision: Does It Work?
Yes - strategically, this is a smart play. Adidas deepens its archive storytelling while keeping relevance with sneaker and lifestyle audiences through Kith. Pogba and Dybala reinforce the cultural weight of footballers as modern-day style icons.
Creatively, the denim-heavy approach may split opinion, but it pushes the boundaries of football-inspired apparel beyond just reissued kits. Commercially, the mix of heritage silhouettes (Supernova Indoor, Predator Sala) with premium lifestyle execution positions the drop as both collectible and wearable.
The only caveat? Adidas risks leaning too heavily on nostalgia at a time when Gen Z increasingly values fresh cultural codes over constant retro reissues. But paired with Pogba and Dybala, the capsule feels more like a cultural re-interpretation than a lazy throwback.
📌 Key Takeouts
What happened: Adidas x Kith’s second 2025 collab fronted by Pogba and Dybala, inspired by 1998 World Cup aesthetics.
What worked: Strong athlete alignment, deep archive storytelling, balance of collectible footwear and lifestyle-ready apparel.
Signals: Football remains a central driver of global streetwear; athlete-as-style-icon is now mainstream; collaborations need credible storytellers, not just retro hooks.
For marketers: This shows the continued value of anchoring brand stories in sport while elevating through credible cultural partnerships.
🔮 What We Can Expect Next
Expect more luxury-streetwear-football crossovers - especially as the countdown to the 2026 World Cup in North America intensifies. Brands will look to athletes as lifestyle leaders, not just sports endorsers. Adidas and Kith’s move suggests we’ll see deeper archive mining - but the challenge will be finding ways to remix heritage without exhausting the retro playbook.