JW Anderson reworks Diadora’s Equipe runner into a slim premium sneaker

The heel is not the story here. JW Anderson takes Diadora’s Equipe, a 1975 runner built for elite athletes, and sharpens it into something leaner, cleaner and a lot more expensive-looking than the average retro trainer on the wall.

The move is smart because the Equipe already has the right bones. Diadora has been leaning hard into its archive, reminding everyone that the shoe was its entry into running and the debut of the brand’s signature Fregio logo. That history gives Jonathan Anderson a real object to work with, not just another vaguely vintage shape to soften up for fashion. In this version, the proportions get tighter, the profile stays low, and the whole sneaker reads less like a gym relic and more like a polished wardrobe piece.

The materials do a lot of the heavy lifting. Coverage around the shoe points to premium detailing, nylon and suede panels, saturated colorways and mixed-color lacing, the kind of finishing that makes a runner feel deliberate instead of nostalgic for nostalgia’s sake. Diadora’s own archive language around the Equipe, with its swallowtail toe and heel-wrapping outsole, makes the collaboration even more convincing because JW Anderson is not erasing the original design language. He is sanding it down and making it sharper.

That is exactly why this will land with the crowd that is tired of the same Samba-adjacent loop but still wants a slim silhouette. It gives the familiar low-profile shape a little more bite, with enough sport DNA to feel legit and enough fashion polish to sit next to tailoring, cropped denim or baggy trousers without trying too hard. One report says it is Jonathan Anderson’s first sneaker collaboration in more than a decade, and that alone gives the drop extra weight. This is not filler. It is a proper return.

The release is set for May 15 through select JW Anderson stores, Nordstrom and both brands’ webshops, with Nordstrom listing the women’s model and pricing it at €390. Nordstrom also says the sneaker is made in Italy in Diadora’s original factory in Montebelluna, Veneto, which is exactly the kind of detail that separates a credible archive grab from a lazy revival.