Oasis Are the Britpop Kings of Adidas Sneakers

“Cause we need each other, we believe in one another,” Noel Gallagher sang on “Acquiesce,” the only song where the brothers behind Oasis share lead vocals together. It’s been 15 years since the Gallagher brothers, Liam and Noel, went their separate ways, but they’re back together. The group announced this week that it will be holding a series of concerts across the UK and Ireland in 2025. The Gallaghers have long held a cultish influence over the world of rock music. The Mancunian duo are seen as some of the last true rockstars. Their music has spread around the globe and across nearly every football terrace. And while the brothers Gallagher are renowned for their music, their style has been equally influential too. In recent years, it’s been their footwear.

When it comes to the Gallaghers, who hated each other so much over the years it was almost parody, there’s one brand they’re most known for. It’s Adidas. Not only have they worn the brand for over 30 years—they were known for wearing shoes such as the Superstar and Gazelle—but they’ve also both had several collaborations with the brand. In recent times, it’s been through the brand’s SPZL line, curated by Gary Aspden, who takes influence from the north of England’s love for the Three Stripes and interprets it through Adidas’ archive. Aspden also served as the brand’s head of entertainment marketing in the ‘90s and 2000s, where he outfitted celebrities like the Gallaghers with footwear.

Noel has worked with Adidas on two pairs, including the Sporting ‘72 that released in 2011 for his High Flying Birds album and was limited to only 200 pairs. It was a white and blue trainer with a gum sole. Next was a more special shoe in some regards. The NG Garwen was released in 2017 for the SPZL line. The blue shoe represented Noel’s love of Manchester City FC and featured his face on the tongue. It was a shoe he was involved in from the ground up. The Garwen was a shoe that released earlier in the year in a brown colorway based off of Adidas’ leisure shoes from the ‘70s. And it was created using a vintage pair of shoes from Noel’s own collection.

“A little while back my mate Gary Aspden borrowed a pair of vintage Adidas leisure shoes (Adidas Brisbane) as he was looking to do a shoe based on them for the Adidas SPZL range,” Gallagher said upon the shoe’s release. “He asked me if I wanted to do a signature version by way of saying thanks and here they are, the NG Garwen SPZL.”

I remember my excitement when the shoes came out, finding a store in the States was getting them, calling the store, and giving them my credit card information over the phone, to get them to sell me a pair.

Noel’s love for Adidas, ironically, goes back to Oasis—not his band, but a store of the same name located in Manchester.

“In Manchester in the Underground Market, there was a store in there called Oasis, oddly enough,” Noel said in an interview with Adidas from 2010. “They used to go out to Europe and bring back all the real football terrace shoes like the Dublin. I remember I used to wag school and go in there just to look at them like, ‘Wow.’ Just the box and the way it looked. It was super cool.”

Adidas Garwen for Noel Gallagher. Image via Adidas

Noel joked that they named the band after the shop, although it’s said that the name came from a tour poster that had Oasis Leisure Center in Swindon on it.

He got into collecting archival Adidas and said, “What my collection comprises is all real vintage Adidas trainers that are almost falling apart. They’re almost falling apart. You can’t wear them anyway. I got little trainers that are size three and a half.”

Noel joked that his wife came up with a theory that the reason he obsessively collected footwear was because he grew up so poor that he just wanted to have everything when he could afford it. He says that he and his brother mostly had to shoplift clothing and sneakers in their younger years. But Noel has since offered up another explanation as to why he got so into collecting Adidas. It relates to giving up one vice and needing to replace it with another.

“When I gave up drugs I had to obsess about something, and I’m not into cars, not into jewelry and all that kind of thing, and I had loads of guitars, so I set off on a quest to collect Adidas trainers,” he told The Independent in 2013. “I had silly amounts—you couldn’t open a cupboard without 20 pairs of Adidas trainers falling out.”

Noel would try and hide shoes from his wife by putting two pairs in the same box.

At one point he collected over 100 vintage pairs of Adidas, but pared the collection back since .

“I kept the best ones back, I’ve probably got about 20 or 30 real vintage pairs, and I put the rest back out there—I gave them to charity shops. Funnily enough when I go to Camden market I still see some of my pairs there and I’ve been very tempted to buy them back.”

He went on to say that getting free shoes is like downloading music and thinks it’s wrong. He prefers to pay for them himself.

Adidas LG SPZL. Image via Adidas

Liam’s break into footwear collaborations has been more recent than Noel’s. It has received a bit more attention. He’s a true style icon. If he wears an obscure jacket, it’s sold out the next day.

The collaborations started in 2019, when Liam performed in Hackney, London. Gary Aspden delivered him a pair of all-white Adidas Padiham SPZLs with his name on the tongue.

“That is fuckin’ bad, man. Love the white sole,” said Liam when Aspden gave him the shoes.

The collaboration between Liam and Adidas SPZL was organic, although it wasn’t as involved as Noel’s.

“I have known Liam for over 20 years and we have always got on. He is one of the people who have worn and supported what we do with Adidas SPZL since day one, so this collaboration evolved organically,” Aspden said at the time.

Liam Gallagher with the LG2 SPZL. Image via Adidas

In 2022, Liam and Aspden embarked on the LG2 SPZL. According to Aspden, it would become a record-setting shoe for SPZL and Adidas. The shoe, once again, comes from Adidas’ archive.

“This new hybrid came from Liam’s love of the vintage Adidas Barrington Smash. This led to me pulling together a group of vintage shoes to begin the conversation,” Aspden said at the time. “The first design meeting with Liam involved us looking at those vintage shoes—a number of which had been designed for squash player Jonah Barrington. We wanted this new LG to be a new shoe rather than adopting a 1:1 of someone else’s signature shoe.”

Aspden went on to say, “We identified the different elements we liked from various shoes to relay back to the design/development team to find out what might be possible. Liam was a big fan of the wrapped suede toe boxes on some of the shoes we looked at and I suggested that we try and combine that with a T toe. There was also discussion where Liam talked about doing them in a bold colourway but in the end we opted to stay with shades of white which we felt aligned better with their predecessor, their ancestry, and would also be much easier to wear.”

The sneaker came out again in 2023 in a white, green, and gum sole colorway. Liam said he was, “Absolutely delighted by them.”

Liam Gallagher in the LG2 SPZL in white/green. Image via Adidas.

Aspden has told me they were the “most subscribed” shoe on Adidas’ Confirmed app last year.

There’s no word yet on whether or not there will be official Oasis sneakers in an upcoming SPZL collection, but I’ve heard rumblings that some things look right up their alley. There’s not even word of what will happen to the band after the reunion shows. But Adidas and Oasis just make sense. Not only do the brothers genuinely love the shoes, more so than most collaborators with the brand, but scores of their fans are already diehard Adidas collectors. Putting their faces on shoes is one of the biggest homeruns the brand could put out.

Noel puts it best as to why he loves Adidas so much. “There’s no gimmick to an Adidas shoe. You don’t have to pump them up. You just put them on and they’re the bollocks.”

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