Adidas collaborates with Dubai artist Fink 22 for new spring/summer collection

The range has been launched at the brand's Originals store in The Dubai Mall with an installation

Artist Fink 22's installation at the adidas Originals store in The Dubai Mall to celebrate the launch of the Blue Version collection. Photo: adidas

Adidas has released its latest spring/summer 2022 collection, and has once again joined forces with Dubai artist Fink 22 to celebrate.

Called the Blue Version collection, the clothes are a reworking of 1980s and 1990s adidas pieces, recreated for today's audience. Familiar elements such as shorts and tracksuits have been reimagined as oversized, or in modern, technical fabrics, with new pleated detailing, and decorated with asymmetric elements.

With the whole collection in shades of blue and grey, jackets have been stretched down to floor-length and running base layers such as leggings, T-shirts, and sports bras are now in technical waffle weave cotton, and come in new proportions.

For the UAE launch of the new collection, adidas turned to British artist Fink 22 to celebrate, commissioning a site-specific installation inside The Dubai Mall store.

Also called Blue Version, it is in shades of blue, and an ode to the power and beauty of the sea. Known for his unconventional approach, abandoning the crisp lines of other graffiti artists in favour of a more energetic, free-form method, the artist has even rethought the use of spray cans, preferring to use a different approach to applying paint.

“As an artist, I’m inspired by the world around me, with the graffitied streets of Berlin providing the idea to repurpose the humble fire extinguisher as a paintbrush,” says Fink 22.

For this project, his unique, paint-splattered approach covers a large canvas in merging tones of blue, with drips and runs. Deliberately untidy, the work is designed to evoke a sense of moving water, and suggests waves breaking on the shore, or a waterfall.

Fink 22 is an entirely self-taught photographer, abstract painter and muralist. With a unique style of large-scale one-line drawings filled with bright colours, he has created works in Berlin, Bali, London, and Melbourne in addition to Dubai. This is his second collaboration with adidas.