Fourteen years ago, Jomi Marcus-Bello, Nifemi Marcus-Bello and KC Obijiaku were skating streets that weren’t built for it, with no scene, no park, no infrastructure to speak of, so they built one themselves, on the grounds of a former colonial prison in Lagos.
That community, Wafflesncream (waf.), is now the first African skate collective to collaborate on the adidas Superstar and the first Nigerian brand adidas has partnered with at all, and the result is the Superstar ADV, a collaborative take on one of the most recognisable silhouettes in sneaker history, with presale live now ahead of a global release on October 12.
Image Credits: waf. & adidas
The Superstar has carried a lot of cultural weight since 1970, when it started life as a basketball shoe before hip-hop, skate and fashion each took their turn claiming it, but what it hasn’t had, across five decades, is an African voice on the design, and waf. is the first to hold the pen.
The shoe’s design language pays homage to Lagos Island: from the upper’s dusty grey; pulled from the Island’s industrial texture, to the outsole’s translucent pink; a reference specific enough that it only makes sense if you know the city, since standing near the water at the right hour reveals a sky that actually turns that colour. Meanwhile, the breathable side panels are a practical concession to the heat, built for a shoe meant to be skated in Lagos conditions rather than displayed in a controlled climate.
Image Credits: waf. & adidas
“When we started, it was a handful of kids skating whatever Lagos gave us,” said Jomi Marcus-Bello, co-founder of waf., “nobody handed us a scene, we built one, down to a skatepark standing on the grounds of an old colonial prison,” and on the shoe’s design language, he added that the approach was less about decorating a fifty-year-old silhouette and more about asking what the city itself would demand of it, so the ventilation answers the heat, the grey answers the Island as it is, and the pink answers the sky above it.
Image Credits: waf. & adidas
adidas has backed waf.’s programming for years, including its Go Skate Day celebrations, which have grown into one of the continent’s more significant skate events since the community opened its first park at Freedom Park in 2024, and Estee Erasmus, adidas’ Director of Category Management for Emerging Markets South, framed the collaboration as an overdue expansion of who gets to define the Superstar’s story, acknowledging waf.’s decade-plus of building Lagos’ skate and youth culture scene without waiting on outside validation.
Presale is live now for a limited run at adidas store Lekki, Lagos, while the global rollout begins October 12 before expanding to adidas retail and e-commerce worldwide, with retail price set at $110.