Full-length trousers. For hot weather. I want you to sit with that for a second, because that is the setup and adidas is fully aware it is the setup — HEAT.RDY is the punchline they built to answer it. It is their hot-weather system: pull the sweat off the skin, move it out to where the air can get at it, dry fast, keep the wearer cool.
Which means somebody sat down and decided the way to beat the heat was more fabric, and then went and made that true. I respect the nerve.
It is basically a comedian committing to a bad premise and getting a laugh out of it anyway.
Woven is the other half of the name and it is doing real work. This is a woven cloth rather than a knit, so it behaves differently: flatter, cleaner in the leg, holds a line, lets air through the weave rather than trapping it in loops.
Pro is the tour-level cut of the range.
It runs in Black and in a colour adidas has named Preloved Fig, which I have to assume was signed off at four in the afternoon on a Friday and which is, annoyingly, a genuinely lovely dusty purple. Sizes go XX-Small to XX-Large.
On the fibre composition I have nothing, and I would rather bomb honestly than kill with a made-up number — the manufacturer's listing would not open, so that line stays blank.
Tbilisi is where these trousers should live, and I am not being cute about it. The name of the city means warm place. They found hot sulphur water bubbling out of the ground, decided that was the defining feature, named the whole city after the problem, and then got in.
Go and see for yourself at the sulphur bathhouses of Abanotubani, sitting under their low brick domes with the steam coming off them. Then take the cable car from Rike Park up to Narikala fortress on the ridge, which is the view everyone photographs and, for once, deserves it.
Come down to the Anchiskhati Basilica, the oldest church still standing here, which has watched this city be flattened and rebuilt more times than is reasonable and has simply declined to comment. Finish at the Dry Bridge market, where Soviet medals and loose chandelier crystal are laid out on trestle tables by people who will tell you, at length, exactly what each one is.
"They named the city after the heat. Then they got in the water. That is a whole national character in one decision."
Black or Preloved Fig. I know which one I would take, and I know which one people will ask about.
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