Entire Studios Blacked Out the adidas Dropset 4, a Lifting Shoe Nobody Was Supposed to Style

The second adidas and Entire Studios collection arrives on September 29, and tucked behind the trench coat and the track suiting is the least glamorous thing in it. The Dropset 4, adidas’ dedicated strength-training shoe, returns in all black with the Los Angeles label’s name on it. A lifting shoe is an odd object for a fashion house to want. That is exactly what makes it the most interesting pair in the drop.

The Dropset line exists to solve a problem that running shoes create. Soft foam under a heavy barbell is a liability, because every millimeter the midsole compresses is a millimeter the bar travels in a direction nobody chose. So the Dropset is built the other way around. It sits low and flat, spreads the heel into a wide platform, and puts its effort into grip and stability rather than into stack height. adidas is four generations deep with it now and still sells the Dropset 3 alongside the 4, which is a fair signal that the line has enough of a following to support two versions at once. The standard Dropset 4 lives in the performance section of adidas.com in ten colorways for men, with a Power Training variant for women, so this is not a dormant model dusted off for a collaboration. It is a working shoe with an existing customer, which is a rarer thing to hand a designer than another terrace silhouette.

Entire Studios’ contribution is subtraction. The shoe arrives entirely in black, stripes included, so the only things reading from across a room are the shape of the forefoot strap and the flat sweep of the heel. adidas lists the spec as Repetitor foam for stability and energy return, a Footadapt sockliner intended to increase foot awareness, Geofit heel pods for support around the ankle, haptic print detailing on the upper for durability and breathability, and an outsole combining Continental rubber, Adiwear rubber and TPU. None of that is new to the collaboration, which is the honest read on it. adidas also points to the Dropset 4 taking Best Workout Shoe at the T3 Awards 2026, a claim worth attributing to the brand rather than repeating flat, though it does say something about where the shoe’s reputation already sits. The product set includes the co-branded box, and the wider 26-piece collection runs in Dove Grey and Black with a Fox Red accent.

The terrace shoe has been mined so thoroughly that the Samba and the Gazelle now work as basics rather than as statements. The gym shoe is the category nobody has taken yet, and the reason is that it is unattractive on purpose. Wide heels, flat soles and strapping do not flatter a leg. Two fashion partners working the same trainer inside one year is a pattern rather than a coincidence, because adidas by Stella McCartney already has a Dropset 4 of its own, and adidas has spent the last two years doing this across its catalog, from Simone Rocha’s Climacool Mary Jane onward. Read together, these are a bet that the gym is now somewhere people dress for on the way out rather than on the way in. That bet has been correct about running shoes for a decade. Whether it survives contact with a shoe this deliberately plain is the open question, and the answer will not come from the collaboration. It will come from whether anyone wears the standard version outside a gym next spring.

The Entire Studios Dropset 4 is listed at $180 against $145 for the standard adidas version, so the label costs $35 on a shoe that keeps all of its engineering. The adidas by Stella McCartney Dropset 4 is also $180, which suggests adidas has settled on a figure for a designer’s name on this last. The Feroza Low in the same collection is $200 and carries less technology and more leather. Nothing here has a resale history yet, because the standard Dropset 4 has never been scarce enough to build one.

The full adidas x Entire Studios FW26 collection launches worldwide on September 29 in stores and online. The Dropset 4 is KJ3221 at $180, and the rest of the Entire Studios collection is already listed on adidas.com, including the Feroza Low, covered separately.

Written by

The Sneakers Team

The Sneakers Team is the editorial desk behind becausesneakers, founded and edited by Nick Engvall. Nick has spent more than two decades in the sneaker industry. He built the original Eastbay Blog, led the first dedicated sneaker team at Complex, ran the first UGC and seeding programs at Finish Line, was employee number nine at StockX, and served as Senior Director at Stadium Goods. He hosts the Sneaker History podcast, and his first book, Small Luxuries: Sneakers, arrives in October 2026 from Motorbooks. Release details on this site are checked against the brand's own product information before publication, and anything we cannot confirm is labelled rather than stated.

More from The Sneakers Team →