There are few clothing shops that can claim to have defined Liverpool fashion as much as Wade Smith.
What was on the shelves of the designer outlet could be seen as a litmus test for what Liverpool was wearing - and what it would be wearing next.
While the store catered to more high fashion in its later years, it was in sportswear where it was originally able to leave its mark on Liverpool in the form of three distinctive stripes.
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Initially working as a footwear buyer for Topman, the shop ’s founder Robert Wade Smith spied a business opportunity that would cash in on the explosion of casual culture that was starting to spark in Liverpool and the north west in the early 1980s.
Prior to the end of the 1970s, adidas trainers were still predominantly associated with sports performance and not the omnipresent high street staple they are today. The adidas copa mundial on the feet of German footballing legend Frans Beckenbauer were likely the most prominent sighting people had of Adi Dasler’s iconic three stripes.
In his years as a roving buyer in the late 1970s, Robert Wade Smith was beginning to notice a trend in sales figures. A third of Topman’s adidas sales came from Liverpool alone, driven by the increasing popularity of the adidas Samba and tennis hybrid Stan Smith.
Seeing this microclimate forming across Liverpool, Wade Smith decided to go it alone.
Legend has it he took a van across Europe and set about loading it up with rare adidas trainers unavailable in Britain - the same types of trainers football fans were cramming into their holdalls when following Liverpool and Everton across Europe.
Much like the Cunard Yanks, who unloaded the American rhythm and blues records at Liverpool’s docks that would go on to shape the scene The Beatles emerged from, what was being brought into the city from afar has always played a significant role in its identity. The story of Wade Smith is no different.
Upon returning from Europe, and with the first Wade Smith premises set up on Slater Street, the store built its success on the back of the humble Trimm Trab, an adidas training shoe that found its true home on the football terraces of England throughout the 1980s. It is said that the store sold 110,000 pairs of the trainers throughout the decade
With fans trading Fred Perry and Pringle jumpers for a cagoule and Trimm Trabs, Wade Smith found itself at the epicentre of rapidly growing subculture. Casuals would make a pilgrimage to the store to peruse the rarest silhouettes of adidas trainers and the wears of Italian brands like Sergio Tacchini.
By the 1989, the shop was an established name and had set up at a more elaborate premises on Mathew Street.
Moving with the times. Wade Smith gravitated towards a new fashion trends with its offer of Nike Air Max and track suits and the baggier brands of acid house like Kickers and Timberland - the former remaining a piece of quintessential scouse footwear today
As the decade wore on, Wade Smith leaned further into high fashion and would become something of a celebrity attraction for its imports of high fashion brands like Prada and Gucci.
After changing hands with the Arcadia Group, Wade Smith eventually shut its doors in 2005 - no longer the dominant force in Liverpool fashion.
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However, the store’s legacy still pervades across contemporary Liverpool. and its beginnings remain shrouded in legend and romanticism.
In Wade Smith, Liverpool had a store that found the sole of the city.
