JENNIE x adidas Superstar SQ Ballet Puts the Ballet Flat on adidas’ Most Valuable Shoe

adidas released the first shoe it has ever let JENNIE design on September 1, and the feeds filed it as a celebrity Superstar. It is not that. The Superstar SQ Ballet is a structural rework: the shell toe is squared off and flattened, the laces come out of the equation, and an elastic band runs across the midfoot. What arrived is a ballet flat with a Superstar cupsole under it, and it landed in a category adidas had already been building quietly for two years.

One correction before the shoe itself. The official name is Superstar SQ Ballet, not “Superstar Square Ballet.” The full retail name on adidas’ own product page is adidas Originals by JENNIE Superstar SQ Ballet Shoes, and Square Ballet is aggregator shorthand that has been copied down the line.

The Superstar earns the attention because of what it replaced. adidas built the Pro Model and the low-cut Supergrip in 1965 as its first basketball shoes, then refined both on player feedback before the Superstar arrived with the rubber shell toe. adidas dates that arrival to 1970 in its corporate magazine and again on its consumer blog, which is worth stating plainly because Wikipedia says 1969 and most of the sneaker internet has taken Wikipedia’s word for it. The shoe took over NBA floors through the early seventies, then Run-DMC recorded “My Adidas” in 1986 and moved it permanently out of sport. Sixty years of that history is the asset adidas just handed to a pop star to cut up.

What she did with it is specific. The upper is premium leather over a soft lambskin lining, the shell toe is squared and widened across the forefoot, and a ribbon runs over the toe as the pointe-shoe reference. Trefoil branding sits on the band, with a Trefoil and JENNIE co-branded logo on the sockliner. The one detail the feeds have wrong is the lacing. Several outlets reported the shoe as a lace-free slip-on. adidas ships it with removable laces in the box, listed on its own spec sheet as included shoelaces for customization, which makes the shoe convertible rather than fixed. That is a meaningfully different product from the one that got written up.

The reason this matters is not that a pop star designed a Superstar. It is that adidas already had a ballet sneaker business and just moved it up a tier. The Taekwondo Mei Ballet is an in-line franchise at $110. A Stan Smith Lo Ballet swapped laces for a midfoot strap and dropped the sole height. ASICS has a GEL-DS Trainer Ballet. Retail has a name for the category now, the sneakerina, and it is used by mainstream fashion desks rather than sneaker ones. Putting the treatment on the Superstar is adidas deciding the category is large enough to spend its most valuable Originals asset on. There is a neat symmetry in who got to do it, too. JENNIE fronted the Superstar: The Original campaign in July 2025 and the Hotel Superstar campaign in Spring 2026. She spent two years as the face of the shoe before adidas handed her the pattern.

How long she has been in the adidas orbit is less settled than it reads. One outlet has her as a brand ambassador since 2018, and no second source carries it. Her documented adidas appearances start in June 2024 with the CLOT Gazelle campaign, and adidas’ own release describes the relationship as one that “has, until now, been defined by ambassadorship” without attaching a year to it. The brand calls her a co-designer on this shoe and does not describe what she specified, so co-designed is as far as the record goes.

adidas lists the SQ Ballet at $130 on its own product page, and Extra Butter and Sneaker Bar Detroit both carry the same figure. Hypebeast has published $150. The brand page outranks it, but the two numbers are both on the record and worth knowing if you see the higher one quoted. For placement, that sits above the Taekwondo Mei Ballet at $110 and in the same band as a premium Superstar makeup rather than a collaborator markup. Nothing about the pricing suggests adidas treated this as a limited celebrity exercise.

The Core Black colorway is LB3787, officially Core Black, Core Black and Off White. The Off White version is LB3786. Both released September 1 through adidas.com, the adidas CONFIRMED app and select retail partners, with Extra Butter running it as a release draw in the United States. adidas named no wider door list in its release, so anything beyond those is retailer reporting rather than brand confirmed.

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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.

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