Y-3 Rebuilt the Stan Smith, a Shoe That Carried Two Names for Five Years

Y-3 put out the Diagonal Stan Smith this summer in three colorways, not the two this post originally listed, and under a longer model name than the one it carried. What Yohji Yamamoto’s line did to the shoe is the usual Y-3 move, a material rebuild rather than a restyle. What makes it worth a second look is the shoe underneath, whose own origin adidas cannot keep straight across its own two websites.

adidas developed the shoe in the mid-1960s with the French player Robert Haillet, and it was originally known as the Haillet. Haillet retired in 1971. Stan Smith was signed after meeting Horst Dassler, the head of adidas France, in 1972, and in 1973 the first shoes carrying Smith’s name were released. Almost every retelling compresses what came next. For five years after that the shoe was the Stan Smith-Haillet, carrying both men’s names on the tongue alongside Smith’s portrait. adidas only dropped Haillet from the name in 1978.

Smith’s credentials are why his name stuck. He won Wimbledon and the US Open in 1972 and held the world number one ranking. By 1989 the shoe had put adidas and Smith into the Guinness Book of Records at 22 million pairs sold.

adidas does not agree with adidas on when any of this started. The company’s own newsroom timeline dates the Haillet to the mid-1960s and Smith’s name to 1973. The current adidas.com product page for the standard Stan Smith says the shoe captures the essence of the 1971 original. Both are adidas, both are live right now, and they do not describe the same shoe or the same year. Anyone citing one origin date for the Stan Smith is picking one of adidas’ two answers without saying so.

The Y-3 version is called the Diagonal Stan Smith, which is the name on adidas’ own product pages rather than a nickname coverage attached to it. The build is a supple leather upper in place of the thin coated leather of the standard pair, a mixed textile and leather lining and sockliner instead of the usual all-textile interior, and a rubber outsole, with Extra Butter’s spec sheet listing cold cement construction. Fit is regular and true to size.

What adidas does not do anywhere in its product copy is explain the diagonal. The word is in the name on all three pages and the description underneath is boilerplate about leather and rubber. The only account of what it physically means comes from Hypebeast Japan, which describes the shoe as an asymmetric Stan Smith with diagonal detailing running across it. That is a single source and not a brand one, so it belongs here as a report and not as a fact.

There are three colorways, not two. KZ9072 is the off white with a black accent, listed by adidas as Off White / Off White / Black. KZ9073 is the all black. KZ9074 is the all off white, which this post missed entirely. All three appear in adidas’ own colorway picker on each product page, so the lineup is confirmed from inside adidas rather than assembled out of coverage.

Y-3 has reworked the Stan Smith repeatedly, the Stan Smith Zip being the version most people can name. Founded in 2002, Y-3 is the line adidas credits with establishing the category of fashion sportswear, and its method has generally been to rebuild rather than reskin. The Diagonal follows that pattern, and the absence of any adidas explanation for its own design hook is the odd part of an otherwise ordinary release.

Retail is $280 on all three adidas.com pages, matched by Extra Butter. A standard adidas Stan Smith is $100 on adidas.com today, so the Y-3 runs at 2.8 times the original. That multiple is normal for the line and it is what the material change buys, a leather upper, a mixed lining and cold cement construction against a mass-market build. Hypebeast Japan listed the Japanese price at 52,800 yen, which is a different market and should not be converted into a US comparison.

All three colorways are live and in stock on adidas.com US as of today in a near-full size run, and Extra Butter carries the off white pair. No source publishes a US release date. Hypebeast Japan gives July 17, 2026, but that is a Japan date tied to Japanese channels, and neither Sneaker Bar Detroit nor JustFreshKicks appears to have covered the shoe at all. This post previously described it as upcoming in two colorways. It is out, in three. Style code KZ9072 for the off white, $280.

Source: Extrabutterny

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The Sneakers Team

The Sneakers Team is the editorial desk behind becausesneakers, founded and edited by Nick Engvall. Nick has spent more than two decades in the sneaker industry. He built the original Eastbay Blog, led the first dedicated sneaker team at Complex, ran the first UGC and seeding programs at Finish Line, was employee number nine at StockX, and served as Senior Director at Stadium Goods. He hosts the Sneaker History podcast, and his first book, Small Luxuries: Sneakers, arrives in October 2026 from Motorbooks. Release details on this site are checked against the brand's own product information before publication, and anything we cannot confirm is labelled rather than stated.

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