Created by the legendary Jacques Chassaing for the ZX series, the Torsion system has continued to evolve but always keeping in line with its uniform aesthetic; a bright yellow bar that can only be seen from the sole. To give greater visibility, some of those Torsion’s used to have lace loops in the same hue that sort of announced what you could find on the sole.
ADIDAS CONSORTIUM RECOVERS THE TENNIS FROM THE ’90S
In their latest season, adidas Consortium has shifted their focus on collaborations to their company’s history of innovation. Their latest launch, the adidas Torsion Edberg Comp is proof of the evolution of the Torsion system, a TPU arch that works as a bridge between the heel and the forefoot and that offers adaptive stability in different kinds of surfaces.
The Torsion system was also used on running, training or basketball models and it soon reached tennis with the help of Stefan Edberg, one of adidas’ greatest names in the world of male tennis players next to Ivan Lendl. Lendl and Edberg’s worlds were opposite to each other, the former was serious, impenetrable, almost mechanical, whilst the latter was elegant, nice and polite.
The relationship between Edberg and adidas started in 1984, and soon after the first sneakers were launched, at the same time as the rise of the Casual image, a world that was associated with football that idealised the tennis aesthetic. The saga of models associated with Edberg started to change at the same time as the image of tennis would and at the 1990 Edberg Comp, colour stood out, in colourways that mixed purple, pink, peach and several hues of blue. The approach to a design that was focused on function tied together to so many of Jacques Chassaing’s masterpieces, but, above all, we couldn’t forget the Torsion system, that functional advantage that stood out only when you looked at the sole.
