adidas presents a new Monotone pack for the popular ZX 750 silhouette. First released back in the late ’80s, the updated classic features a distinct wedge shape and a tonal upper crafted out of both nubuck and suede leathers, and sits atop a Adidas Gazelle Femme thick white outsole. Adidas Ultra Boost Dame Finishing touches include ventilating perforations at the vamp and toe box, alongside subtle embossed branding at the ankle and tongue. Both black and grey editions are now available at select retailers worldwide.

A step taken by Adidas with the launch of its 7X750 trainers – a white shoe with its bottom half covered in fake mud. The sportswear brand teamed up with designer Kazuki Kuraishi and conceptual artist Ryan Gander to create what they call ‘a snow-white leather upper with a clever mud-splatter effect.

Acobwebbed window in a ramshackle store located in a nondescript Buenos Aires suburb. Adidas expert Gary Aspden animatedly recounts the moment a friend emailed him this photograph. “The shop window was stacked floor to ceiling with old blue Adidas boxes. Stuff from the ’78 Argentina World Cup and before. Adidas ZX 750 Femme I started Adidas Gazelle Mujer having palpitations.”

His cardiac arrhythmia is understandable: the photograph was a treasure map. Since trainers became a collectable commodity in the 1990s, finding rare original styles has become harder and harder. Independent sports stores in Europe have long been cleaned out by vigilant trainerphiles for whom dead stock (styles no longer in production) equals vintage gold. Original Adidas are particularly hard to find, as the brand has resonated across underground and popular culture for decades, sought by everyone from old-school Bronx rappers to catwalk models. Not to mention the music gods of Manchester.

Aspden knew he was getting on a plane immediately with fellow collectors and Adidas collaborators Mike Chetcuti and Robert Brooks, but when friend and former Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown heard about the Adidas ZX Flux Womens bounty, he Adidas Gazelle Mujer declared he was coming too.

They knew there might be trouble ahead. “We were told the shop owner was a little… moody,” Aspden says, alluding to 75-year-old Carlos Ruiz, a local legend who is, by all accounts, unpredictable. He sits in his sportswear shop every day but not in order to sell anything. One Ruiz tale concerns the director of a big budget Maradona movie who wanted to use the store as a location – when he pulled out a chequebook, Carlos threw him out. Getting into Aladdin’s cave was not going to be easy.

With this in mind, the group didn’t mention they had a British rock star among them (“We didn’t want to rattle Carlos”). But it was Brown, who speaks a little Spanish, who unearthed the tragic facts behind Ruiz’s eccentric facade. A decade earlier, two youths had shot and robbed Ruiz in the shop. It took Nike Air Max 270 Dames him two Nike Cortez Damen years to walk again. Widowed and returning to work, he discovered the licence had changed hands, meaning all stockists needed to reapply for an account. “They sent a lot of forms to fill in,” he told Brown. “I’m 65, I’ve lost my wife, I can barely walk.” He ripped the forms up.

Since that tragic homecoming, Ruiz has kept hold of his old shoes, describing them as “a noble product”. He sits in the shop every day, amid the dust and cobwebs and columns of old stock, an obscure duty he sees as therapeutic. Aspden’s assessment is more literary: “He’s the Miss Havisham of the sportswear world.”