The "Wade Smith" Pin

by Kieran Molyneux

For Spring/Summer '19 we give a nod to the OG 'Sportswear & Leisure Footwear' retailer Wade Smith.

The pioneering brand was created in Liverpool by Robert Wade Smith in 1981, and incase you're too young to remember, we've linked a brilliant piece below from The Echo that tells you all you need to know.

  *The pin badges will be included in our ULTRA Ticket gift bags. A limited run of 50 pins will also be available online for everyone else, which you can pre order now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Jonathan Turton for The Liverpool Echo

 

If you’re a man - or woman - of a certain age from Liverpool, it’s almost inevitable that you purchased a pair of trainers from Wade Smith.

Probably a jacket, tracksuit and a load of polo shirts too.

Between 1981 and 2005, Wade Smith was the zenith of menswear on Merseyside. A purveyor of original wears, the back-street retailer was the epicentre of casual fashion in Liverpool - the rarer the import, the better.

Stories of how a 21-one year old Robert Wade Smith came to open his shop in Liverpool are almost mythical. With tales of train journeys to far flung corners of Europe in search of products, chance encounters with football fans and gym bags stuffed with Deutschmarks, its formative years are an era cloaked in romanticism.

What’s irrefutable is that the former Adidas worker had a vision to capitalise on a terrace culture that was sweeping through the city- soon the country...

 

 

 

 

 

Images by @trimmtrabtales & @transalpino