CLOT Gives adidas Mundial a Woven, Terrace-Ready Summer Update

Edison Chen kept his eye on the details that change everything. The latest CLOT x adidas Mundial took adidas’ heritage football boot and pushed it toward terrace style, swapping the standard hard-edged sports finish for woven texture, cork Three Stripes branding and an espadrille-style sole that read less pitch-bound and more resort-adjacent.

The silhouette matters because the Mundial is not a blank canvas. adidas has long cast the line as steeped in history and built for today, and the Copa Mundial itself first arrived in 1979, which gives this remix real weight rather than novelty for novelty’s sake. Chen did not simply sprinkle craft onto a classic boot. He shifted its personality, turning a familiar soccer shape into something that sits between the changing room, the beach café and the fashion week front row.

That tension is exactly what makes the shoe feel like CLOT. adidas launched its global partnership with Edison Chen in October 2023, framing him as a cultural bridge between East and West, and the collaboration has moved quickly through different registers. The CLOT Gazelle by Edison Chen arrived on June 11, 2024. A heritage-focused collection followed on July 2, 2025, including the CLOT Stan Smith Espadrille. Then came a Chinese New Year 2026 capsule on January 27, 2026. In that context, the Mundial teaser looked less like a one-off stunt and more like another chapter in a partnership that keeps testing how far adidas Originals can stretch under Chen’s eye.

Visually, the shoe’s black-heavy colorway and cork accents gave it a sharper, more dressed-up edge than a standard football retro. The woven construction softened the boot’s severity, but the espadrille sole is the move that will split the room. It is clever because it instantly codes summer and eases the Mundial into lifestyle territory without abandoning its sporting pedigree. It is also the point where purists may start to bristle, because the sole takes the shoe away from clean utility and into something more interpretive, almost editorial.

That is the point. CLOT did not just make the Mundial prettier. It turned adidas’ classic cleat into a conversation piece, the kind of object that can anchor a terrace look precisely because it refuses to stay in one lane. With colorway, SKU, MSRP and release date still marked TBC, the teaser has already done its job: it made a 1979 football icon feel newly current, and slightly impossible to ignore.