The second shoe in the Brain Dead and adidas Five Ten collection is the harder one to explain. The NIAD is a slip-on climbing shoe, a real one, and it arrives November 6 in navy hairy suede with purple webbing tabs and a rust-red pull at the heel. Its name is not a word. It is an acronym for one of the most recognisable feats in American climbing, and almost nobody buying this pair in a streetwear drop is going to attempt it. That gap is the reason the shoe is worth writing about.
NIAD stands for Nose in a Day. The Nose is the route up the southwest face of El Capitan in Yosemite, and climbing it inside twenty-four hours has been a benchmark since the 1970s. Five Ten attached that name to its flagship climbing line in 2021, when it retired the Anasazi badge the same shoes had worn for decades and reissued the range as NIAD, including new versions of the Anasazi, the Moccasym and the Pink. The Moccasym is the slip-on of the group, and it is the direct ancestor of the shape Brain Dead is working with here, a shoe Five Ten has kept in the line on essentially one idea for a very long time. Five Ten’s authority in that room is not marketing. Charles Cole founded the company in 1985 in Redlands, California, named it after the 5.10 grade in the Yosemite Decimal System and introduced Stealth rubber a year later, and the compound is still the reason climbers argue about the brand. adidas acquired Five Ten in 2011. Cole stayed in research and development for several years and died in 2018.
Brain Dead’s treatment is quieter than the Guide Tennie it launches alongside. The upper is a dark navy fuzzy suede over a brown-black toe, with a tonal zigzag stitch along the collar and two purple webbing tabs, one at the heel and one at the throat, for pulling the shoe on. A small rust-red tab sits at the inside heel carrying the Brain Dead name, and the midsole band is left unpainted so the suede reads darker than the sole it sits on. The 5.10 wordmark runs large and white across the lateral panel in the same oversized treatment the Guide Tennie gets. There are no laces and no eyelet ladder, which is how the Moccasym has always worked rather than a liberty Brain Dead took. Underneath sits a full Stealth rubber outsole with the compound’s name moulded into it, wrapped up over the toe box the way a climbing shoe needs it. adidas lists a soft sockliner and a premium leather and textile upper, and describes the shoe as built for challenging climbs and for powering through sets in the gym, which are not the same shoe and not the same fit.
That tension is the whole story of this release. A climbing shoe is sized to be uncomfortable. Climbers buy them small, wear them without socks and take them off between attempts, because the fit is what keeps the toe box precise on small holds. A shoe sold through a streetwear calendar is sized to be worn down a street. adidas has not resolved which one this is, and the press copy tries to have both. The brand has been pushing Five Ten toward visibility for a year now, through the Samba Climbing and the Freerider Pro BOA, and both of those moved in the safer direction, adapting a climbing idea onto a shoe people already wear. The NIAD does the opposite and hands over the real thing. It is the more interesting decision and the riskier one, because it asks a streetwear audience to want the actual product rather than a reference to it.
Retail is $180, matching the Guide Tennie. The number reads differently once you remember what a climbing shoe actually is, which is a consumable. Climbers grind the rubber off the toe and send the shoe out to be resoled, often more than once, and a performance NIAD is priced on that assumption. Paying collaboration money for a pair most buyers will never resole, and many will never climb in, is a different transaction from the one Five Ten normally runs. adidas charged $120 for the Samba Climbing earlier this autumn. The last Brain Dead adidas release was limited enough that it set no resale pattern, and Five Ten has never had one to begin with.
The Brain Dead x adidas Five Ten NIAD releases November 6 in limited quantities at $180, alongside the Guide Tennie at the same price. It will be available at adidas.com, at wearebraindead.com and at select retailers. adidas has not published a style code for the NIAD, and the only code in circulation, KI5020, is carried by a single aggregator, so treat it as unconfirmed until adidas lists the shoe.
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