MENACE and adidas Originals unveil pink Superstar for Mother’s Day

MENACE took adidas’ most familiar streetwear shoe and softened it just enough to make it feel new. The Old Rose Superstar landed in pink suede with white Three Stripes, a quilted sockliner and a gum sole, then wrapped that classic shell-toe in a Mother’s Day story built around founder Steven Mena’s own life.

The pair released on May 10 for $180 through adidas CONFIRMED and MENACE’s site, with a Los Angeles activation on May 9 that pushed the sentiment even further. The first 100 people who showed up with their mothers or another loved one were set to get free flowers, and a purchase of one pair came with a second pair, turning the launch into something closer to a gift moment than a standard sneaker drop.

Mena said he called his mother to ask her favorite color before the design came together, and that detail explains why the shoe reads less like a loud collaboration and more like a personal note translated into product. He dedicated the project to his mother and the sacrifices she made for his career, a line that fits the origin story he has told before about MENACE itself, starting with $500 and 12 shirts sold from the trunk of his mother’s car in Southeast Los Angeles.

That personal history gives the shoe real emotional weight, but the commercial appeal is still easy to see without the backstory. The pink tone is gentle, giftable and far less aggressive than the usual streetwear palette, which matters when the canvas is an adidas Superstar, a silhouette that already carries decades of cultural shorthand. adidas says the shoe hit the market in 1970, with the shell toe preserved in a 1969 archive prototype, and later became a hip-hop staple through Run-DMC and “My adidas.”

This was MENACE’s second adidas Originals link-up after its first collaboration last October, a sign that the partnership is becoming a lane rather than a one-off. For streetwear buyers, that matters: the story makes the pair memorable, but the real hook is still the shoe itself, a familiar icon recast in a softer register that feels tailor-made for gifting, collecting and wearing straight into spring.