Adidas Originals has unveiled a new partnership with famed Hong Kong-based streetwear brand CLOT. The drop comes as Spring Festival – the busiest period in the Chinese shopping calendar – is about to kick off, but this isn’t an attempt at a seasonal sales spike. The campaign will run throughout 2026, with the bit-by-bit release of short anime films.
Anime is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Initially, it sidesteps a lot of the cliches about the Lunar New Year: the zodiac tie ins, prosperity symbolism, family reunions – but it does this without abandoning cultural specificity. Anime has dug in deep with Gen Z and millennial Chinese consumers. It allows for fantasy and abstraction in a way that few other formats do.
CLOT’s co-founder and creative director Edison Chen takes the leading role in the first of these animations. In the short, he plays a key master with the power to unlock energy portals and, with them, possibilities. None of this is built on an island. The campaign’s core theme is Unlocking Infinite Possibilities, and future films will play on the same idea. Guest characters are said to be entering into this extended narrative as the films drop.
Nor is this without a product line to sell. The collaboration’s result is a range of apparel that gently draws on Year of the Horse imagery and blends it with kung fu culture. Martial-arts silhouettes are printed onto western tailoring, jackets sport mandarin collars. Trainers incorporate pearl-frog buttons.
So why is this more important than anything else a big clothing brand is putting down for CNY? Rather than betting on short-term buzz, Adidas Originals are putting their money on narrative depth. They’re moving away from festive flair and into long-term IP building. This collaboration works well for CLOT too. They’ve long held the image of a cultural intermediary – a brand that speaks to both east and west. As far as IP-building goes, helping Adidas Originals lean into the China market is no small score.
