BRAIN DEAD PUTS HAIRY SUEDE ON ADIDAS' ZUPERKLIMB

Kyle Ng climbs. His label, Brain Dead, built a whole equipment line around a bouldering spot in Griffith Park, and this year it's dragged adidas up the wall with it. The adidas Originals x Brain Dead Adventure collection is the next pitch, a hiking shoe called the Zuperklimb with a full outfit and a carabiner.

adidas is calling it "a different kind of adventure." For this partnership, it's the most natural one yet. It lands November 20 on the adidas CONFIRMED app and at select retailers.

Most collabs pick a famous shoe and change the color. Brain Dead keeps asking adidas for shoes hardly anyone remembers, made for sports the label's own people do.

Hairy Suede on All Three Zuperklimbs

The Zuperklimb comes in three colorways, a brown and black, a blue and green, and an all black, each priced at $160. The style codes run KK2714 through KK2716. The uppers are hairy suede, the long napped kind Brain Dead has used on adidas before, in washed, vintage looking shades.

END's product pages fill in the build. There's a half open mesh under the suede, reflective hits, a lacing setup borrowed from hiking boots, an adiPRENE midsole and a rubber outsole. Both logos are on it.

It's a trail shoe dressed like a thrift store find. That's the Brain Dead move, and hairy suede is how they do it. A slick synthetic hiker looks like gear. A shaggy brown one looks like something your uncle wore in 1998 and never threw out.

Sneaker News Dates the Zuperklimb to the 2000s

The Zuperklimb is an old adidas outdoor shoe, and not a well known one. Sneaker News calls it "a relatively obscure silhouette from the 2000s originally designed for climbers."

It isn't a Hyperturf or a Superturf, the shoes most people picture when they hear adidas Adventure. The Hyperturf arrived in 2021 and has carried the line since.

Brain Dead went past them. It reached for the pair with the strange name, out of the outdoor end of a catalog that runs all the way back to Adi Dassler and his workshop.

Kyle Ng's Label Has Been Climbing All Year

Brain Dead has spent 2026 on rock. In July the label ran five climbing sessions at the Golden Gate Wall Traverse in Oakland and gave prototype Five Ten NIADs to climbers who finished the 200 foot route under Highway 24. It wasn't for sale.

It went on sale properly on November 6, when the NIAD reached Brain Dead Equipment. Five Ten was founded in 1985 and adidas has owned it since 2011.

Before any of that there were chalk bags in ballistic canvas, lined in fleece and made with the Old LA Zoo boulders in mind. Ng helped create that Equipment line himself.

So the Adventure collection isn't a detour. It's the walk in. The NIAD is what you wear on the wall, and the Zuperklimb is what gets you to the base of it.

Two weeks apart, from one label, through one parent company. Somebody planned that.

Bowling, Tennis, Wrestling and Now a Trail

Brain Dead and adidas have been at this since January 2024, when a bowling shoe went to friends and family for the label's tenth anniversary. Ng and Ed Davis started Brain Dead in 2014.

What followed reads like a rec center schedule. A Stan Smith arrived in September 2024. A tennis collection built on the Forest Hills came in April 2025, in four hairy colorways. Then wrestling, with the Japan Flames pack that August, and a Climacool 2 and Taekwondo Mei capsule in December that came with collectible figures raffled on CONFIRMED.

This year started with football. The Disney Futbol collection opened at Brain Dead Studios on Fairfax on June 29, twelve pieces with a Predator turned into a dress shoe at the center. The bowling shoe came back in cheetah and snakeskin on October 8, reissuing an adidas design from 1978.

Count them up and it's bowling, tennis, wrestling, taekwondo, football, climbing and hiking. Not one of those is basketball or running, where sneaker collabs usually live. That's what I like about it. The partnership works like a guy who keeps joining new leagues, and adidas keeps finding him the right shoes in the basement.

One Metal Carabiner Finishes the Outfit

The clothes are built to go with the shoe from head to toe, all under adidas Adventure branding. Sneaker Bar Detroit lists a crewneck sweater, a fleece jacket, nylon cargo pants, a beanie and crew socks.

Then there's the hardware. The collection includes a metallic carabiner with both names on it.

It also sells through Brain Dead's own site, beside the CONFIRMED app. That matters with this label. Its Fairfax home is a working cinema in a building from 1942, and its drops tend to feel like something a club made for its members.

Clip the carabiner to a belt loop and that's a guy at a trailhead who looks like he's been there before.