Feature: Dry Clean Only x adidas Originals

Model in a white adidas Originals x Dry Clean Only reworked dress with a striped panelled skirt, standing beside white sheets pegged on a washing line

Here's the part that makes this collaboration better than most: Patipat Chaipukdee had been cutting up vintage adidas t-shirts for years before adidas ever asked him to. Hand-knitting them, adding marabou feathers, slicing panels out and putting them back differently. The collaboration is a brand formalising something a man in Bangkok had already been doing to their clothes for a decade.

The dress above is the method in one frame — a t-shirt top spliced onto a striped skirt, with the three stripes running down the seam where the two halves meet.

adidas Originals x Dry Clean Only reworked garment Dry Clean Only x adidas Originals collection piece with lace panelling adidas Originals x Dry Clean Only Bangkok collaboration Dry Clean Only reworked adidas archive piece adidas Originals x Dry Clean Only campaign image

Chatuchak market, 30,000 baht

Chaipukdee, who goes by Best, didn't finish his degree. He did two years at Bangkok University, took an unpaid internship, and opened a stall at Chatuchak Weekend Market in the late 2000s with 30,000 baht. Dry Clean Only grew out of that.

The method has stayed the same since. He buys old t-shirts — band tour shirts, wildlife prints, sportswear logos — and takes them apart. One finished piece might carry two or three collars, with a collar becoming a cuff, panels slashed and filled in with lace or sequins. He calls it a problem-solving strategy: he wanted to make something one-of-a-kind without starting from bolts of fabric and patterns like everyone else.

The brand describes this as its whole reason for existing — mass-produced materials turned into things that can't be reproduced. That's an upcycling argument and we'll leave it in Dry Clean Only's words rather than make it for them, but the practical result is that no two pieces come out identical.

What adidas gave him

The collaboration ran in two drops through 2021 and pulled from the adidas archive. Chaipukdee's contribution was Thai, and specific: the collection took its cues from Muay Thai, including a pair of boxing-style shorts with adidas written across the front in Thai script.

Elsewhere it's the reworking he's always done, applied to three stripes instead of a Rolling Stones tour shirt. Camouflage with a lace insert at the hem. Contrast panels where you wouldn't put them.

adidas Originals x Dry Clean Only second drop Dry Clean Only x adidas Originals drop two piece

Still going

The pairing didn't stop in 2021 — there was a Dry Clean Only Samba OG in 2025, with the Thai lettering carried through to the labelling and a gold lace dubrae. Not many collaborations last that long, and fewer still keep the collaborator's own language on the shoe.

We don't stock this now. The 2021 collection sold through years ago and we're not going to pretend otherwise. If you got here looking for a piece, resale is your best bet.

What we do have is in our adidas collection, though it's running trainers rather than anything from the archive.

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