Sneaker with a Ticket

Fashion keeps trying to be art. Art keeps trying to hide inside normal things. Usually it doesn’t matter—it looks cool, accomplishes nothing, whatever. But Adidas Berlin figured out how to skip the middle part and just make something that works.

They made a sneaker, the EQT Support 93/17 Berlin, probably around 200 euros. Nothing remarkable about the shoe itself. But they stitched an actual annual U-Bahn ticket inside it. A full year of free transit in Berlin.

You buy the shoe, you get your commute covered. No more thinking about passes, no more calculating whether a trip’s worth the fare. Just wear it and ride. It’s the kind of idea that feels obvious once you hear it—the sort of thing that shouldn’t have taken anyone this long to do, but somehow did.

I’ve never actually seen one of these. I’m not sure how well it works in practice, or if people buy them for the ticket instead of the shoe, or if it’s just a good story. But I like it anyway. For once, something designed to be fashionable actually solved something.