crooked tongues magazine News Features

These releases have been heavily covered since overhead views hit the hype blogs, but given that this year has yielded some solid shoes, but offered few strong contenders, plus, given our love of the Huarache, we haven't hugged our feet lately (nice one, W&K!) since the keenly priced greens made a triumphant appearance on FL shelves which merits some coverage. And these makeups are banging. While speckle soles and earth tones are a deader horse than Shergar, these are a no-brainer, pimping the neoprene link between the Huarache and cult forum favourite, the Mowabb "the state-of-the-art training shoe built for the serious fun of outdoor cross training" from '91. Few ACG releases were given such killer colours and the Mowabb made waves, in its original, sequel and plus form, even getting bitten by the cheeky design team at the then-ailing Troop brand.

Sharing the same birth year, the Huarache's impact across the board, from connoisseurs to road kids up to the present day is immense. It's a hard silhouette to truly balls up, and such is the devotion to this technical staple, that one member of the CT crew recently attempted to wrangle the Huarache t-shirt that Jim Redmond rocked when he assisted his anguished son Derek across the finishing line in '92 from Jim himself, along with any possible deadstock sponsor shoes, only to be met with a dismissive chuckle. It's not the first time we've seen this design in these Mowabb-style tones - particularly the beautiful beige nubuck takes from years back, but here (a duo unfortunately, we couldn't get hold of the UK size? exclusive purple and browns) the soft leather and colours that almost match make for a definite '07 highlight.

In terms of economics, the 95gbp tag is more than a little outlandish for a shoe that's always been a little prone to damage (particularly on recent issues). With the logo of a New York streetwear brand on the footbed it'd be a sad inevitability. Here it's just baffling. That's roughly 170usd, or 4,900.28 rubles. A lot of money. Whereas an unexpected treat like the aforementioned FL's Mowabb inspired Air Max didn't suffer a hefty markup, it seems magazine covers and page upon messageboard page of anticipation, plus select distribution was open to exploitation. Some will scrutinise the air of chunkiness about the shoes, but judging by the current retro rollout, maybe we can expect a pointlessly yellowed exact reproduction with flaking leather in 2009...

Between these and the forthcoming Bobbito AF1s, it's refreshing to see Nike finally giving the heads what they want. Shame about the price.