Adidas Samba Jane Maroon / Cream White / Gold Metallic

Two ways to run it. One: with a midi skirt or a slip dress and a sheer or fine ribbed sock, so the maroon picks up the warm tones in the outfit and the gold metallic does your jewellery work for you. Two: with cropped straight denim or wide leg trousers that stop above the ankle, keeping the open instep and the strap visible, which is the entire reason to choose this over a closed Samba. It fits true to size and the strap gives you genuine adjustment room, so take your normal size. Note that it is graded in women's sizing, which is why the size run stops where it does. For care, brush the suede toe dry, never soak it, and keep the leather out of monsoon puddles, because maroon leather waterstains and never fully comes back.

The Samba's second life is one of the most complete revivals in sneaker history: icy training pitches, then nineties skate parks, then a 2020s status object turning up across film and television. The Samba Jane is adidas answering the obvious next question, which is what the most worn silhouette of the decade looks like when it has to work with a dress. Maroon, cream white and gold metallic is the colourway that answers it hardest, because it walks away from the terrace and tracksuit palette entirely and lands somewhere closer to a ballet flat. That is the gap Mary Janes have always filled, the space between a heel that is too much and a plain sneaker that is not enough.

The upper is premium leather with a suede toe cap, the same two material logic the Samba has always used: leather for the structure that holds the shape through a season, suede at the toe where your foot flexes hardest and a stiff panel would crease ugly. The Mary Jane construction cuts the shoe open across the instep, which does two jobs at once. It breathes in a way a closed Samba never will, useful in Indian heat, and it drops the visual weight so the shoe reads dressy instead of sporty. A single adjustable strap replaces the laces, so you are in and out in a second and can tune the tension to your own instep. Underneath is the grippy rubber outsole the silhouette is built on.