adidas gives Superstar, Taekwondo and Japan a cow-print makeover

adidas is not dabbling in animal print anymore, it is building a lane around it. The brand’s next swing is a women’s cow-print pack that puts pony-hair uppers on the Taekwondo, Superstar and Japan, and the smartest part is that each pair keeps its own attitude instead of just wearing the same pattern and calling it a day.

The Superstar is the easiest to recognize at a glance, and the black Shell Toe gives the cow-print upper a sharper edge than a plain all-over treatment ever could. It reads like a classic adidas sneaker that has been dragged through the pasture and come back with more personality, which is exactly why it works. The Japan, by contrast, feels slimmer and more styled, with gold eyelets that make the spotted upper look a little more jewelry-like, a little more deliberate, and a lot closer to the kind of shoe people buy because they want compliments from strangers.

The Taekwondo is the sleeper. adidas already describes the model as sleek, minimal and ultra low-profile, and that shape gives the cow print a different job here. Instead of overpowering the shoe, the pattern sits on top of that lean martial-arts silhouette and turns it into something that feels street-ready without getting loud. Of the three, it has the best shot at moving from novelty to real rotation, because the shape does some of the work for the wearer. The Superstar is the safe play, the Japan is the fashion play, and the Taekwondo is the one that could actually get worn into the ground.

This pack also makes more sense when you look at what adidas has been doing around it. The brand has an animal-print shopping hub and an animal-print Originals section live on its site, and it has already pushed cow-print through other heritage runners and court shoes, including a separate Samba pack that surfaced with a $120 women’s price and Summer 2025 timing. The SL 72 OG is also on adidas.com in a cow-print, pony-hair finish, which makes this latest trio feel less like a stunt and more like a company testing how far the formula can stretch.

The women’s adidas Originals cow-print pack is expected to land in August 2026 through adidas.com and select retailers. At this point, adidas is not just decorating icons, it is using texture and pattern to decide which classics can still feel fresh, and which ones can still sell.