Wales Bonner’s First BW Army Puts Pony Hair Where the Stripes Never Were

adidas has handed Grace Wales Bonner most of the pieces of its archive worth having. The Samba, the Gazelle, the Adizero Adios, a silhouette drawn to her own spec. One obvious candidate kept sitting out, and it happens to be the one the brand has quietly turned into a shelf fixture. On October 29 the BW Army, the stripeless trainer adidas made for the German army in the 1970s, arrives in two Wales Bonner versions cut from pony hair and stamped lizard leather.

The BW Army is the least decorated shoe adidas sells. No Three Stripes on the sidewall, no stripe set punched in perforations, nothing at all where the brand normally puts its name. What sits there instead is a single angled leather overlay running from the midsole up toward the laces, plus a small Trefoil pressed into the heel counter. The model began as an indoor training shoe issued to the West German army through the 1970s and into the 1980s, which is where the BW comes from, and the bare sidewall is usually read as a consequence of that. adidas has never said so, and the shoe has done fine without the explanation.

What the brand has done is lean on it. The in-line BW Army currently runs eleven colorways on adidas.com, wears a best seller badge, and has spawned a Lux build and a deconstructed one. Hartcopy has had a pair. The Whitaker Group and Kith have both had turns. For a shoe with no logo on its side, it has become the most reliable collaboration canvas adidas owns outside the Samba.

Both Wales Bonner pairs are built from three materials, and the seams between them are the design. Pony hair covers the heel quarter and the forefoot panel. Stamped lizard leather takes the toe cap, the angled side overlay and a patch at the lower quarter. Everything that has to hold a shape, meaning the eyestay and the tongue and the heel counter, is smooth leather. Where those panels meet, the shoe is closed with a heavy tonal whipstitch worked by hand, the same craft register as the blanket stitching on the collection’s green Gazelle.

The khaki pair, KK2809, runs olive top to bottom with burgundy piping around the collar and a burgundy satin sockliner carrying a gold Trefoil and the Wales Bonner wordmark. The black pair, KK2813, swaps the piping to navy and renders its lizard stamp in high gloss rather than the khaki pair’s matte finish, so the same panel reads as a different material on the two shoes. Both sit on a gum midsole with the adidas wordmark debossed into it and a serrated edge. adidas’ release describes pony hair uppers with contrasting stamped lizard print leather overlays, and the photographs show exactly that, which has not been true of everything in this collection.

adidas cannot settle on what this shoe is called, and the confusion is informative. Its own US product page for the black pair reads Wales Bonner Karintha BW Army Black Pony. Its page for the khaki pair, the same shoe in a different skin, reads Wales Bonner Karintha Army Khaki Pony, with the BW dropped. The press release calls both of them WB BW Pony and names no silhouette at all. Retailers and the press have landed on BW Army and quietly left the Karintha out.

Karintha is the name of the one model in this partnership Wales Bonner drew from scratch, and adidas is now using it as a prefix on a shoe she did not draw. That is a line name rather than a model name, and it is the clearest signal yet that the brand is treating her output as a standing sub-label instead of a run of one-off reskins. Four names for one shoe is sloppy bookkeeping. What the naming is reaching for is not.

The standard BW Army sells for $120 on adidas.com, and it has held that number across eleven colorways and two spin-off builds, which is not how a shoe behaves when a secondary market is pulling at it. These two are $200. The gap buys pony hair, hand whipstitching and a satin sockliner, and it lands them at the bottom of the collection rather than the top. US stockists have the crocodile Karintha listed at $220 and the suede Adizero Adios at $200. Inside a Wales Bonner drop, the BW Army is the way in.

Both pairs release October 29. adidas’ own product pages say 8 a.m. and name no time zone. They go up at adidas.com and through the CONFIRMED app, with select retailers alongside. Stockists already carrying listings include Above The Clouds, Slam Jam and Asphaltgold. Style codes are KK2809 for the khaki pair and KK2813 for the black, and retail is $200 on both.

Written by

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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