Published Monday 7 October 2019 at 14:28
Dedicated finance apprentice adidas superfan Macauley Cooper has become one of only 200 people in the entire world to get his ‘feet’ in a pair of the limited edition Blackburn trainers.
18-year-old Macauley, who works for Blackburn with Darwen Council’s finance team, joined dozens of superfans, armed with his £100, to get a pair of the green and red collectors’ items, with all proceeds donated to local homeless charity Nightsafe.
Macauley spent over four hours waiting in the rain – alongside a queue of fellow fans – some who had camped out for four nights and travelled from as far as New York, Hong Kong and Paris to become part of the collecting elite.
He’s now got his size eleven and a half (to be precise) pristine boxed shoes that will take pride of place with the rest of his adidas collection at his home in Blackburn.
He’s got an excuse not to wear them now as they are the wrong size!
He said:
I’ve got about 20 pairs and I’m really pleased that I’ve managed to get a pair, I was number 154 out of 160 people in the queue to get a number so it was very close. If I’d have missed out, I would have been gutted. I’m a size nine and a half but they only had the bigger sizes left which means I definitely won’t be wearing them! It’s been a really good atmosphere here today, there’s people from all over the world in the queue that we’ve been chatting to.
The brand was brought to Blackburn after adidas brand consultant and adidas SPEZIAL designer, Gary Aspden, from Darwen, collaborated with the Council to present an exhibition of 1000 shoes from his own archive as well as those from fellow adidas collectors at the upcoming British Textile Biennial.
The exhibition will be on display for everyone to view for FREE at Blackburn’s magnificent Cotton Exchange building (opposite the Town Hall). The adidas Spezial exhibition celebrates the training shoe and its legacy as an important marker of when the young working classes found cultural expression in an item of clothing.
The 80s in Blackburn saw the emergence of the cult of the adidas trainer on the football terraces, the dancefloors and abandoned mills and warehouses of the town.
The exhibition will be accompanied by an interactive engagement programme funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund where people will be able to share stories of how their own trainers and wardrobe choices expressed their identity and passions.
The exhibition is open 4-8pm Monday-Friday and 12-8 Saturdays and Sundays, running for the next three weeks until October 20, 2019.
For more information, go to: www.spezialblackburn.com