Wales Bonner’s Karintha leads adidas SS26 with woven Brazil-crafted update

Grace Wales Bonner just made the smartest move in adidas: she walked away from the Samba’s overexposed lane and built something stranger, softer, and much more collectible. The Karintha is the anti-Samba story in one shoe, a woven leather design hand crafted in Brazil with a wavy sole that reads more like a sandal-sneaker hybrid than another terrace rerun.

adidas officially unveiled the Spring/Summer 2026 Wales Bonner collection on April 17, and the brand framed it around two ideas: football as cultural narrative and irreverent expression on pitch. That split gives the line more bite than a standard collab rollout. The Karintha, first shown on the Wales Bonner runway, is the clearest sign that Grace Wales Bonner is not interested in repeating the formula that made her last adidas work explode. Some coverage pegged the Karintha Basketry at $600, which is exactly the kind of price that tells you this is meant to read like craft-first footwear, not a warmed-over retro hit.

The rest of the lineup stays inside that same tension. The WB Adizero Adios arrived with brown leather and suede overlays plus a hand-woven leather tongue, while the WB Gazelle Pony leaned into a pony-hair upper, black leather details, and contrasting stripes. Wales Bonner’s own community page also listed Karintha Basket, Karintha Black, Karintha Ivory, Adizero Adios, Gazelle Pony, and Gazelle Snakeskin, with limited-stock, first-come, first-served preorders opening at 9:00 a.m. BST on April 17. This is not the usual terrace churn. It is a tighter, more deliberate drop built for people who want texture, not just a familiar shape.

That matters because Grace Wales Bonner has already done the impossible part once. Since 2020, her adidas partnership has been one of the rare fashion-sneaker alliances with actual cultural pull, and she is widely credited with helping push the adidas Samba into full-blown obsession. The Karintha feels like the moment she stops feeding that appetite and starts redirecting it. Harley Weir shot the campaign, Arsenal midfielder Myles Lewis-Skelly appears in it, and adidas tied the on-pitch pieces to the buildup around FIFA World Cup 2026. The message is blunt: luxury streetwear is moving away from retro familiarity and toward artisanal statement footwear, and Wales Bonner is leading the turn.