Adidas Adidas 1985 Eau de Toilette

Sometimes there is something to be said for having already passed the 30, the 40, and, uh...yes, even the 50. Because we kids of the 80s, this crazy, groundbreaking and unique decade, were lucky enough to get to know fragrances that no longer exist today in this complexity.

One of them is the very first fragrance from Adidas, and it appeared just in time to pave my way to the Olympus of fragrances as my first "real" fragrance (after olfactory warm-up phases with Hattric, Pitralon, Sir Irish Moss and Champaca). I had just saved up a brand-new Vespa, and I needed a fashionable outfit to go with this pudding-yellow speedster!

Sneakers to the scooter? How disgusting! So I found the matching Adidas slippers in a shoe shop in Heilbronn, and while I was still paying a pimple-face that was still puberant, the nice saleswoman said "Wave se au a Pröble, Adidas is now doing the scent! (So, in English: "Wouldn't you be open to a sample of the new odeur from the house of Adi Dassler across the street?") I gladly accepted the vial and the next day I tested the fragrance. What can I say? It enchanted me from the first moment -- and still does, with some long, yes - very long, far too long -- dry spells without it.

The interplay between the citric component and the green elements right at the beginning, plus a pinch of oriental, a scoop of lavender and everything nice and powdery and sweet, but never even close to the olfactory sugar shock overkill, the classic Adidas spreads a wide-ranging opulence that never gets annoying. The heart note then lets everything subside somewhat, the fragrance meanders in calmer waters towards floral borrowings, reinforced by moss and tonka bean. Finally, the citric component provides a tailor-made finale, and the cedar adds a few warm, sensual coniferous farewells to the happy end. But this only hours later. Many, many hours later!

Adidas Classic (which at that time was never called Adidas, just like the VW Beetle was never officially called Adidas on the engine cover!) was a child of its time, cheap in price and yet never cheap in the sense of today's drugstore fragrances, which either smell like shower gel or deodorant or just like alcohol plus some random newsreel of the synthetic headaches the cleaning fairy swept up from the floor, but Adidas was a blueprint for a clean, clearly structured and yet a little bit off the leash biedermann, who can also drum himself on the chest. A pearl of the perfumer's art, a fragrance that left us far too early to let his horrible Mischpoke with the same surname undeservedly take the stage!