FEBRUARY 2023

ART & ENTERTAINMENT
SHOES continued from page 34
from Germany came to visit the facility
in Portland. “One of my directors set
up a meeting between me and him. He
said, ‘Show him your stuff; I just want
you guys to talk.’ After the meeting, he
told me about the Adidas Design Academy
and invited me to apply.”
Adidas Design Academy is a twoyear
rotational program where a
young designer gets exposed to many
different departments and parts of the
brand. The Design Academy requires a
special project as a part of its application,
so Jaddou spent six months putting
together various ideas from his
previous work.
“There was something like 270 applicants
from all around the world,”
Jaddou said, “and they pick six of them
in the end. They filtered the applicants
through various rounds. Eventually,
I made it to the round of 75, and they
conducted an online interview. After
the interview, they eliminated all but
18 people, and everyone was invited to
Germany for three days.”
Jaddou described the long weekend
as a “Project Runway showdown.”
“They made us take the project we
had done for the last several months
and expand on it,” he said. “We had
four hours to change it in some way.
My project was an origami shoe that
folded up, and the laces went through
every pleat. When you tighten it, the
sole folded up and it changed the
shape of the shoe.”
During those four hours, Jaddou
remembered the enchantment of his
old Y-3s. “I added a mileage tracker
to the shoe and a screen on the inside
of the tongue displaying it,” he said.
“Not only did it create emotional attachment,
but from a technical side,
you could see how long the shoe lasts
before the tread starts to fall off.” Jaddou
also created a fake app where you
could see a leaderboard with your
friends’ shoe mileage.
Jaddou described the inside of the
Adidas headquarters as a “spaceship.”
During that short trip, he met people
from countries all over the world - Philippines,
Thailand, Sweden, France,
Barbados, and many more.
After the four hours passed and the
assignments were turned in, the judges
issued a group challenge. “They told us
to sit there and think of a concept based
on three words. After 30 minutes, we
shared our ideas with the group. Based
on those ideas, we had to create something
together as a team,” he said.
“We created a prototype of our
idea. I presented the idea to the judges,
and they loved my leadership,”
Jaddou explained. “I was the person
there that brought all of the individual
ideas into one concept. Finally, after
the competition, they invited me to the
Academy for two years.”
At the start of his Academy experience,
Jaddou lived in a smaller German
town and knew barely any of the
local language. Adidas didn’t provide
him with language courses, but his
workplace was so international that
he found it easy to communicate with
everyone in English.
By the program’s design, Jaddou
worked on many projects and in many
different areas of the operation. He
worked closely with the Adidas customization
tool - a web app that allows
a customer to design their own
shoe. He also contributed to high-end
collaborations with Raf Simons, Rick
Owens, and the legendary Y-3 line that
inspired his love for shoes years ago.
“I lived in Vietnam for three
months,” Jaddou said. “I worked inside
of a shoe factory as a technical
designer. That’s where I got a more
precise eye for design. Every millimeter
counts when you design a shoe, a
mold, or a sole. My job there was to
interpret a designer’s sketch from the
German office and make it feasible for
manufacturing; working with engineers
and bolt makers and everything
in between.
After the Design Academy, Jaddou
had spent one year as an intern and
two years as an apprentice working
with Adidas before being offered a
position. It was directing the MyAdidas
customization application which
he had worked on previously in the
apprenticeship, building colors and
palettes and deciding which materials
and shapes to offer.
“It was cool, but I really wanted to
design a product,” Jaddou said. “I really
wanted to design shoes from scratch,
from zero. A different offer came my
way from Reebok in Barcelona.”
After learning more about the company
and position, Jaddou took the job
with Reebok and moved to Barcelona.
His role was designing hi-tech, sport,
and lifestyle, which was right up his alley.
This new office was far from a headquarters;
it was a satellite office, and he
had to learn Spanish quickly. “Three
years of Spanish in high school doesn’t
do much,” he commented wryly.
Jaddou worked at Reebok for about
a year. “It didn’t work out in the end.
The projects we were doing ended up
getting dropped. We were working at
a satellite office, working on projects
outside of what the global team does.
And that relationship just ended up
disintegrating.”
After he left, Jaddou did some freelance
work to keep busy while looking
for a new full-time position. At
this point in his career, Jaddou was a
young, inspired, committed, and proven
design talent who had held roles
with and worked for the highest-end
design teams. Even then, it was more
than difficult to find another position.
“I always say that the hardest part
about a job is getting it,” Jaddou reflected.
“I counted 25 total interviews between
leaving Reebok and getting my
36 CHALDEAN NEWS FEBRUARY 2023