In 2012, after years of skating streets that were never built for it, Jomi Marcus-Bello, Nifemi Marcus-Bello and KC Obijiaku set out to give the city the scene it didn’t have. Fourteen years later, their passion and tenacity found a home: a skatepark raised on the grounds of a former colonial prison. And have now built a community that has become the first African skate collective to put its name on the adidas Superstar.
adidas and waf. (Wafflesncream) today announce their collaborative Superstar ADV, marking adidas’ first partnership with a Nigerian brand and making waf. the first African skate community to collaborate on one of the world’s most enduring sneaker silhouettes. Presale opens today, ahead of a global release this October.
The First African Skate Community to Reimagine the Superstar
Originally introduced in 1970 as a performance basketball shoe, the Superstar has evolved into a cultural icon embraced by successive generations across music, fashion, art and skateboarding. Yet in more than five decades of the silhouette carrying culture, no African skate community has ever held the pen. With this collaboration, adidas invites the Superstar ADV into a new cultural conversation, one shaped by fourteen years of community-building and creative expression in Lagos.
Co-founded in 2012 by brothers Jomi Marcus-Bello, Nifemi Marcus-Bello and KC Obijiaku, they set out to build the scene Lagos didn’t have: a platform where skateboarding naturally intersected with fashion, music, art, design and youth culture. Today, after establishing its first skate Park in 2024 at Freedom Park, Lagos, Nigeria, waf. is recognised as West Africa’s pioneering skate community, while its annual Go Skate Day celebrations have become one of the continent’s defining skate events.
“When we started, it was a handful of kids skating whatever Lagos gave us. Nobody handed us a scene. We built one, down to a skatepark standing on the grounds of an old colonial prison. People ask why the shoe is pink. Stand on the Island at the right hour, this close to the sea, and look up: the sky turns pink. That is Lagos. This shoe carries fourteen years of our community, and it carries our sky.”
— Jomi Marcus-Bello, co-founder, waf.
A Partnership Built Over Time
Over the years, adidas has supported waf.’s community initiatives, including Go Skate Day, recognising the role the community has played in shaping Lagos’ skate ecosystem. The Superstar ADV collaboration builds on that longstanding relationship, celebrating a movement that has grown organically through the people who built it.
Every element of the collaborative Superstar ADV is drawn from Lagos Island, shaped by the community that has skated, dressed, and lived alongside waf. for over a decade. The upper’s dusty grey reflects the Island’s industrial landscape and restless energy, while the translucent pink outsole captures something only the city’s own would recognise: so close to the sea, at certain hours, the sky over Lagos turns pink. Breathable side panels move air through the shoe, adapting the Superstar ADV for the heat it will actually be skated in, a silhouette designed not only to tell waf.’s story, but to be worn within it.
“There’s a phrase we hold on to: treat your context as an archive. Lagos has always been ours. When the Superstar came to us, a shoe with more than fifty years of history, the question was never how to decorate it. It was what this city would ask of it. The sides breathe because our heat demands it. The grey is the Island as it actually is. The pink is our sky. Skateboarding gave us our community, and that community gave this design its language. This shoe is where the two finally meet.”
— Jomi Marcus-Bello, co-founder, waf.
Throughout its history, adidas has approached collaboration as a way to amplify communities and cultural movements already shaping the future. From partnerships rooted in local creativity to collaborations celebrating African design and heritage, the waf. Superstar ADV continues that legacy, bringing one of adidas’ most recognisable silhouettes into dialogue with one of Africa’s most influential creative communities.
“For fifty years, the Superstar has been claimed by hip-hop, by skate, by fashion, by communities who took it and made it theirs. waf. have been at the forefront of skateboarding and culture in Lagos without waiting for anyone’s permission. This shoe is that story, told in their language, and it opens a chapter the Superstar has never had: an African one.”
— Estee Erasmus, Director, Category Management EM South, adidas
Release Information
Releasing globally this October 12th, the waf. × adidas Superstar ADV represents more than a new interpretation of an iconic silhouette. It recognises fourteen years of persistence, creativity and community-building, while celebrating how a movement that began on the streets of Lagos has become part of the Superstar’s global cultural legacy.
Presale opens July 23, 2026, with a limited drop available at adidas Lekki, Lagos. The global release follows on 12 October 2026, beginning at the waf. flagship in Lagos and rolling out across adidas retail and e-commerce. The Superstar ADV will retail at $110.
See more photos from the drop…
Featured image: waf. and adidas
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