The New Balance ABZORB 2000 is not a subtle shoe, and it doesn’t waste any time telling you so. The sole is sculpted, almost aggressively so—the kind of thing you’d expect to find on a concept sketch from 2002, which is more or less the point. What’s unexpected is how it got here: the midsole wasn’t drawn by hand. It was sculpted in virtual reality.
Fashion has been picking through Y2K’s wardrobe for a while now. The ABZORB 2000 is something a little different from the usual revival—it’s using current tools to reconstruct a specific feeling, aimed squarely at a generation that grew up treating nostalgia as both an emotion and an aesthetic.
The shoe launched globally on 12 June 2025. More colourways and retailer exclusives followed through the rest of the year and into 2026. The release schedule is fine. The backstory is more interesting.
Charlotte Lee Had a Sticky Note and a VR Headset
Senior Product Designer Charlotte Lee’s references for the ABZORB 2000 were personal and tactile—early-2000s runners, overt cushioning systems, and the kind of layered mesh construction that looked busy in the best way. She knew what era she was drawing from. She just refused to design in it.
Instead of sketching, she went into VR to sculpt the midsole digitally. In the campaign footage, there’s a moment where a small sticky-note sketch dissolves into a 3D render of the sole—nobody narrates it, it just happens, and it also says more about the shoe’s intent than anything else in the video.
“The process of looking back created the foundation of ABZORB,” Lee says. “But this is where we look to the next generation.”
It’s the kind of line that should sound like marketing. Coming after what you’ve watched, it doesn’t quite.
A Midsole Worth Looking At
The New Balance ABZORB 2000 is a lifestyle shoe, which isn’t a demotion. It just means the engineering is in service of daily wear rather than race-day performance—and in this case, the engineering is genuinely worth talking about.
Full-length ABZORB cushioning runs the length of the foot, joined by ABZORB SBS pods distributed across a segmented base, all held in check by a Stability Web shank through the midfoot. It’s soft where it needs to be, firm where it counts, and at 419–422 grams, it’s not pretending to be anything other than what it is: a substantial shoe.
Put it next to the 2002R, and the ABZORB 2000 reads considerably bolder. Against the 9060, it’s also less sculptural and more bluntly rooted in 2000s runner DNA—chunkier without being cartoonish, visible without being ironic about it. New Balance wrapped the upper in breathable mesh over lightweight printed synthetics. In Singapore, you’ll be grateful they did.
Pull on your usual size. The fit does what New Balance fit reliably does: holds you without fussing, accommodates without being sloppy
Y2K Keeps Coming Back Because It Was Never Really Gone
The cultural appetite for early-2000s running aesthetics isn’t mysterious. After a long stretch of quiet minimalism, fashion got bored and went looking for something with more to say. Pod soles, metallic hits, layered construction, tech that sits on the outside of the shoe rather than being tucked away—it all reads as confident now in a way it maybe didn’t when it was new.
For the cohort that grew up with it, Y2K aesthetics aren’t nostalgia exactly—they’re closer to a first memory. First-generation smartphones. Dial-up connections. Digital avatars, before they were called that. There’s an awkward hopefulness attached to the era that feels worth revisiting, and not just for the soles.
New Balance has the back catalogue to make this argument, honestly. The 1906R and 2002R already established that early-2000s performance silhouettes have a life outside the decade they came from. The ABZORB 2000 takes that further by not softening the design—it goes the other way, pushing the tech to be more visible, more present, and less apologetic about how much space it takes up.
Designing that through VR also gives the whole thing a slightly strange coherence. Y2K was analogue, just barely. Its 2025 version is filtered through software. That’s not a contradiction so much as the natural progression of how nostalgia actually works.
Eze, the Cages, and What the Campaign Is Actually Saying
Eberechi Eze fronts the campaign. He grew up playing on South London cage courts, made it to Crystal Palace and England, and he wears the ABZORB 2000 the way the shoe wants to be worn—not as a statement, just as the thing on his feet. That ordinariness is deliberate. The shoe isn’t trying to become a trophy by association; it’s trying to stay useful.
What the New Balance ABZORB 2000 is competing with isn’t the latest carbon-plated racer. It’s the pair of shoes someone reaches for when they’re not thinking about shoes—when they’re heading out in wide-leg trousers or an oversized jacket and want something on their feet that holds its own without demanding attention.
Within New Balance’s current lineup, it sits as the brand’s clearest statement on visible-tech lifestyle for the mid-2020s. Plusher than the 99x classics, more deliberately chunky than the 2002R, and less abstract in its construction than the 9060. It’s a position the brand has been building toward for a few years, and the ABZORB 2000 is probably the most direct expression of it yet.
Whether it sticks depends on whether people want their nostalgia edited or authentic. The ABZORB 2000 has made its choice—cleaner proportions, better materials, and VR-sculpted soles. The early 2000s, as they should have been, rather than as they were.