Which fashion house collaborated with adidas on the first Y-3 collection in 2003?

Yohji Yamamoto collaborated with adidas on the first Y-3 collection in 2003.

Y-3 combines Yamamoto’s avant-garde fashion design with adidas sportswear technology and manufacturing. The name joins the letter Y from Yohji Yamamoto with the number 3, referring to adidas’s three-stripe mark. The partnership helped establish a major designer-sportswear model that later influenced luxury sneakers and fashion-oriented streetwear.

Early Y-3 products included clothing, footwear, and accessories that used athletic construction while presenting more sculptural, minimalist silhouettes. The label’s black-heavy visual language became especially recognizable.

Y-3 is sometimes mistaken for a simple adidas sub-brand or for a collaboration with another Japanese designer. It is specifically the long-running partnership between adidas and Yohji Yamamoto, whose name is central to the label’s identity.