NEW BALANCE ABZORB AT DINNER WITH VISCOSE COLLECTIVE.
style • 06.05.2026

NEW BALANCE ABZORB AT DINNER WITH VISCOSE COLLECTIVE.

ABZORB was originally developed as a cushioning technology: a system designed to receive impact, disperse shock, and make movement feel softer. But absorption is not only physical. In a landscape where images move faster than meaning, where visibility no longer guarantees understanding, the question shifts from what we see to what we are able to process. The New Balance ABZORB 1890 becomes a material starting point for this question. Together with Viscose Collective — whose work approaches fashion criticism as image literacy — we sat down to discuss how images circulate, why they feel increasingly unstable, and why text still matters as a way to slow them down. Around the table, the conversation moved between images, publishing, fashion, and the strange fatigue of seeing too much. Not as a rejection of images, but as an attempt to understand what happens when they become the primary condition through which fashion is encountered.

Today, a sneaker is rarely first experienced as an object. It appears as a campaign image, a product page, a screenshot, a styling reference, a repost, a saved post. Before it touches the ground, it has already entered circulation. In this sense, the ABZORB 1890 does not sit outside the image economy. It moves through it. Its technical construction, muted palette, and archival references make it feel both familiar and displaced. It’s like an object recovered from a recent past and reintroduced into a faster visual present.

With Viscose, the question is not only how the shoe looks, but how it becomes legible:
through context, language, circulation, and the systems that frame it. The discussion unfolded around a shared tension: images have never been more powerful, yet they often feel increasingly empty. They attract, seduce, and move at speed, but they do not necessarily explain themselves. Without context, an image remains open — sometimes productively ambiguous, sometimes simply detached. This is where text enters the frame. Not as a replacement for images, but as a structure around them. A way to slow down the act of looking, to trace authorship, intention, and system.
This was the text then, you can see the videos and images on IG, and shop the New Balance ABZORB at Slam Jam.

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ABZORB 1890 Sneakers Faded Black / Utility Green
HK$1,469.00 HKD
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ABZORB 1890 Sneakers Star Burst / Black
HK$1,469.00 HKD
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ABZORB 1890 Sneakers Boysenberry / Punch Yellow
HK$1,469.00 HKD
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ABZORB 1890 Sneakers Dark Silver Metallic / Granite
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