A new exhibition in northwest England celebrates 10 years of adidas SPZL

You were born and grew up in Darwen, what does it mean to you to be able to stage this exhibition in the town?

Gary Aspden: It means a lot, and hopefully will mean a lot to the community. Meaning is a key consideration in everything we try to do with the SPZL range. I am of the belief that industry people and fashion influencers in major cities grow accustomed to brand activations where they are entertained and given free drinks – it can become standardised and expected. Unless a brand does something exceptional many of these events can be reduced to a meaningless exercise in content capture. All brands do it to varying degrees, but I question how impactful many of these events are.

Bringing culture to an economically deprived area like Darwen through a purpose driven marketing activation is a powerful statement and I am grateful to the people at adidas and the local council here for supporting this idea.

In a 2016 interview from the exhibition North: Fashioning Identity you spoke about the philanthropic aspects of parties in Blackburn in the late 1980s and how money from the parties would be given back to the community. Has this approach informed what you are aiming to do with the education programme and fundraising aspect of DECADE?

Gary Aspden: I would like to think that it has. In 1988 there was purity in the vision that the people of Blackburn had for those parties. It was a huge statement to give all profits away in those early days but sadly there were those ‘pillars of the local community’ at the time who rejected these financial gestures. That rejection was down to the fact that the money came from acid house which was being demonised in the local and national media at the time.

Sadly, that didn’t last but for a short while in 1988 I loved the fact that they wanted to publicly demonstrate that they had a bigger agenda than making money – these were working-class people who weren’t wealthy giving the profits of their work away.

The firm behind those parties were a few years older than me but I knew them all and that radical spirit was an inspiration to me as an 18-year-old party goer. We truly believed that we could change the world and that we didn’t need to just accept the established order. Perhaps there is still some of that lingering in me somewhere. I believe people in the UK deserve better than what has been happening in the past decade. I wouldn’t have wanted to do this in Darwen without finding mechanisms to put something back into the community.

“If the DECADE exhibition can be a formative experience in the way that hearing a Street Sounds album or seeing a Mille Miglia jacket for the first time was for me then I would be super happy” – Gary Aspden

The exhibition and book celebrates ten years of adidas SPZL, what do you think is key to the longevity of the range?

Gary Aspden: We never chased trends. Terms like ‘heritage’ became like dirty words internally at adidas for a few years around 2016, and the agenda for adidas Originals was all about the future and ‘creating the new’. I believe SPZL followed the ‘creating the new’ agenda but on its own terms. We were creating the new out of an archival aesthetic – making new shoes that take their design cues from old shoes if you will.

We have built a dedicated community who have stuck with SPZL and are grateful to those inside adidas who have supported our vision. Those who are into SPZL generally buy product to wear rather than to resell. The experiential value of people engaging with the product (I see loads of people wearing it at football) is far more valuable than the financial resell value for me.

After ten years we are now being told that we were ahead of the curve with what we have done with the Spezial range when for us we have no interest in that curve. We have an ideology that underpins the range, and we stick to that. The difference between what we do for adidas and what is currently happening in fashion with adidas is that one is about a trend whereas the core audience for SPZL is about a subculture.

It feels like this exhibition has the potential to be a formative experience for young people, in a similar way to buying a magazine or hearing certain music for the first time. What are your thoughts on the role that access to fashion and culture can have on people?

Gary Aspden: I believe I survived my youth and much of my life because of fashion and culture. Music, art, clothes, sport, and of course trying to be decent person are the things that have kept me sane and inspired through some of my most difficult times.

If the DECADE exhibition can be a formative experience in the way that hearing a Street Sounds album or seeing a Mille Miglia jacket for the first time was for me then I would be super happy. Inspiring young people is a huge, huge bonus – if you lose your faith in youth then you’ve got nothing.

A project like DECADE demonstrates that culture can come from or happen anywhere – it isn’t exclusive to metropoles. Good art rarely comes from comfort zones. How many aspiring working-class artists and musicians can even afford the rent on a studio or rehearsal space in a major city in 2024? I was contacted last week by a youth from Darwen who is studying photography called @shotbyscum. He is taking great images of his friends and his environment, so we have invited him to take pictures at the opening night and the events. We are hoping that the education program will engage young people with subjects they find interesting.

For the exhibition we have taken what was a closed down Quality Save supermarket that was potentially going to become yet another Pound Store (the town already has three of those) and have worked with the local council to repurpose that into a beautiful exhibition space – a platform for culture if you will. I want to show people what is possible with some investment and imagination. I sincerely believe that this stuff matters.

DECADE – 10 Years of adidas SPZL is at 4 Market Street, Darwen, BB3 1AZ until May 26