Pirate Black is where the adidas era actually begins. The Boost 350 released on 27 June 2015, months after the first adidas Yeezy product arrived in February 2015 alongside the Yeezy Season 1 show at New York Fashion Week, and Pirate Black was one of the founding colourways that set the naming convention the whole line would follow: material and terrain, not fashion. Everything after it, Oxford Tan, Turtle Dove, Moonrock, Beluga, Desert Rat, follows the vocabulary this pair established. The V1 silhouette is narrower and lower than the V2 that succeeded it in September 2016, and to people who were there, it is the original shape.
All black knit is the most versatile thing the line ever made. Recipe one: black tapered trousers with a slight break and a black overshirt, a fully monochrome fit where the knit texture is the only variation. Recipe two: dark raw denim, a white tee and a leather jacket, where the shoe keeps a classic outfit modern without shouting. It works after dark, at dinner, and in most loose dress codes. Take your true size, though the V1 runs narrower than the V2, so wide feet should try before buying. Brush the knit dry after wear and clean marks with cold water and a soft brush. Keep the Boost midsole away from direct heat, which permanently compresses the pellets.
This is the shoe that started the modern sneaker drop. Limited quantities, long queues, bots and an immediate resale market, all of it built around a shoe that could not be identified by any logo. From here the line grew into one of the most commercially successful signature partnerships in sneaker history, generating roughly two billion dollars a year for adidas at its peak, with GQ calling these the most influential sneakers in 2016. adidas terminated the partnership on 25 October 2022 after antisemitic public remarks by founder Kanye West, calling them unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and later sold through remaining stock, which is where later runs of this colourway came from.
The upper is Primeknit, the one piece machine knitted construction that gave the 350 its sock like fit with no traditional panels, worked here in an all black knit where the texture rather than the colour carries the detail. The heel is reinforced and there are suede detailing elements at the heel counter on the V1, giving the back of the shoe a structure the knit alone cannot supply. Underneath is adidas Boost, the expanded TPU pellet foam that gives the model its bounce, wrapped in a rubber outsole. There is no visible logo anywhere, which in 2015 was still a genuinely radical decision for a mass release sneaker.
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