Welcome Back, Stan

Six or seven years ago, I was something of a sneaker fanatic. My overall style was somewhat different back then, and I was always on the lookout for retro styles in special colorways. These ended up being mostly adidas, and I bought most of them on eBay, with a few from other online stores like Classic Sport Shoes.

After a while my sneakerism waned, and I sold several pairs, but I held onto a few. One shoe I've liked and worn for a long time is the adidas Stan Smith. Named after a tennis player, it's one of the most popular and longest-running athletic shoe styles. It's about as plain and simple as a sneaker can get, which is a big reason it appeals to me.

The last time I had a pair of Stans was about three years ago, when I bought a limited-edition version that was made to look just like the shoe when it first went on sale over 40 years ago. I liked that the heel tab was suede instead of leather, and that there was nothing on it—no logo, no branding of any kind. I wore them to work during the summer, but unfortunately the leather had a sort of semi-gloss finish, and the tongues slid off to the sides when I wore them. I ended up selling them on eBay a year or so later.

The original version of the shoe was white with a bright green ("fairway") heel tab, and the Stan is always available in this color, as is one with a navy blue heel tab. If you really want to fly below the radar, logo-wise, you can usually find all-black without looking too hard, and there's an all-white version too. I always thought the shoes would look great with red heel tabs, but I could never recall adidas making one. Then it appeared last fall, along with royal blue (another very logical trim color).

I didn't buy them right away. I'm not sure why. I think I was trying to convince myself that I didn't need them, but I knew that I would get them eventually so it seems silly now. A couple of months ago I noticed that the red variant was 20% off at Zappos, so I put them into my cart and saved them for later. But when I went back for them recently, they were gone—all sizes of that color had sold out.

Of course, these days it's almost always possible to find something you want, so it didn't take long before I found a few sizes of the red-trim Stans left at shoes.com. They sometimes have odd pricing on shoes—you'll see something marked at 5% off its original price like it's a big deal. But then they have sales with another 25% off "all sale shoes," which was the case with these, so they worked out to around 30% off the original price.

These will be going into the summer rotation with my boat shoes, with some leather Pumas I've had for a few years, and with a couple of pairs of canvas sneakers. One odd thing: there are no lace stays on the tongues, something that older versions definitely had. I hope these don't give me problems like the others, or I may end up DIYing it and cutting slits in the tongues.