Adidas Apologizes to Bella Hadid Following Campaign Controversy

In a post shared to social media early Sunday morning, Adidas wrote, “Connections continue to be made to the terrible tragedy that occurred at the Munich Olympics due to our recent SL72 Campaign. These connections are not meant and we apologise for any upset or distress caused to communities around the world.”

“We made an unintentional mistake,” the apology continued before making mention of Hadid and the other partners involved in the campaign. “We also apologise to our partners, Bella Hadid, A$AP Nast, Jules Koundé, and others, for any negative impact on them and we are revising the campaign.”

Adidas’ apology comes just days after the German sportswear brand took down the ad after earning criticism from Israel and others for not only including Hadid, who is of Palestinian heritage, in the campaign, but for promoting that particular sneaker, the SL72, a callback to the 1972 Olympics in Munich, and using the event as inspiration, despite a terrorist attack that took place there in which 11 Israeli Olympians were held hostage and murdered by terrorists.

Adidas announced plans to revise their campaign and apologized for the misstep, with Hadid removing images from the brand shoot from her social media pages as well.

But, the ordeal did not sit well with Hadid, and her legal team took action, with TMZ reporting Saturday that that the model was lawyering up against Adidas for their lack of public accountability after feeling like the brand spearheaded a cruel and damaging campaign.

While Hadid does not take issue with the campaign being pulled, sources tell the outlet that she’s upset Adidas would reference the 1972 Olympics without acknowledging the historical context beforehand, and even more upset they would associate anyone with a tragedy as awful as that one, especially with violence running so inconsistently with the model’s own views.

The company has since and continues to claim that any connection made between the campaign and the tragic 1972 event was “completely unintentional.”

Hadid is also still reportedly under contract with Adidas despite earlier initial reports that the company ‘dropped her.

Whether she will stay on with the brand, or take legal action after this apology remains to be seen, but it appears Adidas is trying to do some damage control to avoid that at all costs.