crooked tongues magazine News Features

Beckham's reinterpretation of the Laver? What can we expect? Diamonique? Golden contrast stitching? Ummm...none of the former bad taste applications. In fact, caffeinated Friday afternoon good spirits aside, we'd actually go as far as saying that this is the best Rod Laver makeup beyond the original brace of makeups back in the day we've seen to date. And best of all? it uses the Rod Laver Super shape rather than the vintage version (which is admittedly ...

When Nike declare that they're holding a "summit" and you get an invite, for the most part, it means you should attend for sheer spectacle alone. Football boots on Crooked Tongues sounds like an odd move, but while they're hardly as functional for casual wear - tottering to the newsagent on studs isn't a good look, but we feel like flag burning non-patriots when our World Cup coverage is confined to trend-led interpretations alone. So we're going ...

On hearing that David Beckham was dropping a whole 'DB' line as part of the Originals By Originals collection, we were sceptical, anticipating a ton of white-on-white Stan Smiths, Forum Lo and maybe a ZX 700 Boat or two. We may have even smirked, seeing as the company he was keeping consisted of the mighty Alyasha of Fiberops fame, Fragment's Kazuki and Jeremy Scott, but from the off, it erased the smugness with a strong level of quality control ...

We like the word Gipfel. We think it means 'Summit' in German, and it sounds right for an adidas shoe - this offroad-looking Torsion basketball creation is ill. Channeling the looks of the recently resurrected Artillery (which we first saw retroed recently in a modified Jeremy Scott variation for Originals By Originals) it cranks up the militaristic aspects of the shoe and makes for an interesting break from previous Kazuki adidas designs, with an upper in ballistic nylon, nubuck and leather ...

The current solution to everything is to festoon it with D-rings until the blogs and kids that pretend not to care about sports footwear listen up, but few really pull it off with any aplomb - Nike dropped a couple of fine Terminators that were an unlikely candidate to take to this mode of fastening but worked well, Gourmet's Tredici benefits from luxury leathers and the MT Boot, introduced year ago in the debut Kazuki adidas drop is another great ...

After clocking these in the Nike showroom last year, our next exposure was through one of those strange YouTube videos where someone gets an early pair in the unlabeled box and then tries to fill four minutes talking about them. We salute those dudes, because we have issues trying to shoehorn information into paragraphs, let alone flash video. But the Spiz'ike gives you a hell of a lot to talk about. You could talk about the mix of III ...

"Don't think - feel!" Can we have a late pass? We just realised that we had these in the office, but didn't actually put them in the News. That's the pressures of retail in effect, but any excuse to feature the fifth football-inspired Kobe is a given, and this curious low-cut, no-sew design was one of last year's best. Admittedly, it got eclipsed in our affections by the LeBron VII, but that was an exceptional release. If ...

The adidas Consortium line is banging out the good stuff at the moment - this weekend's drop of three running makeups is proof positive that the rollout's on a roll in 2010, but we wouldn't want you to avert your gaze from what the easier-to-obtain pieces are saying this Spring. We briefly hyperventilated about a ZX 5000 that steered from the formula with a certain level of expertise, and these bad boys are set to drop next month ...

Friends and family editions of any shoe are an excuse to go crazy without having to explain yourself to irate fanboys. Promo means you can do whatever you like. Anything within a certain reason. When we heard there was a limited edition Future Sole Jordan I, we had visions of what it could look like - a 'drawn on' style application in line with the project's ethos? A makeup inspired by the previous year's winning entry? Actually, what we ...

Even if American sports stop and start a little too often for your low Euro attention span, you've got to love the NBA All-Star Weekend. The Slam Dunk competition alone is greatness distilled, and specifically for a few hours of big budget entertainment, we get to see some of the maddest colourways of performance and heritage pieces. With Dallas as the location, it's inevitable that familiar elements of the city are being shoehorned into the All-Star rollout. We ...

While it was actually a decent shoe, the Stussy PRO-Keds Royal release from 2003 that let the dollar circulate seemed to come at a darker time for the brand. We won't mention the Dame-era again (the new Warhol, apparently) but with some tireless promo work, and access to a certain Mr. Ross's BlackBerry contact list is working for us, as the brand stands between heritage honesty and a pick of partners who actually seem to relish the freedom ...

If you hunt down Wieden+Kennedy's excellent shelved documentary, you can see sneaker guru and man in the know Thomas Giorgetti, currently making powermoves with Bleu De Paname and Norse's distro, practically spitting at the quality of Jordan II retros. It all comes down to one thing - the OG was that colossal step from the first Jordan installment, ditching the swoosh, and getting all futuristic, with Italian manufacture that made all the difference. This was high-end footwear that ...

The adidas Artillery is a stone-cold classic and arguably the best basketball piece to implement Torsion technology. Trust us, we've argued over the matter. Whereas designs like the Bank Shot feel cumbersome when that cutaway came into play, the Artillery is a more refined creation. We recall some aborted resurrections a few years back and it was a serious shoe in its heyday, so when it seemed to make a slightly masked, but visually arresting return in the first ...

After the three PUMA Suede drops from last year, we guessed that there might be more makeups on their way for 2010 too. We're on some Columbo shit that way you see. So far we've seen five more colourways that do it for us, following the original formula down to a tee, and the shape works for us too. Two hit the store tomorrow in both a forest green and a grey and blue, Georgetown looking jumpoff, pictured ...

The Gel Lyte III's entire design is one preoccupied with weight - in suede and mesh it's one of the finest ASICS creations there is, and it's no surprise that it shifted from cultish appeal among runners and Steep Tech sporting Brooklynites alike with tastes for superior performance and oddball design respectively. We've been assailed with makeups of the shoe lately since it reappeared quietly circa. 2006, and from pop to shades of offroad, it never struck ...

When is a magazine actually a book? We don't know. Nor can we be bothered to spend paragraphs agonizing over that conundrum either. Fluff is a fine publication, but it's pretty irregular when it comes to dropping - they just take their time and just go all out with each issue, like the Carhartt one a few years back. Marcel Veldman's photography is star attraction, and none more so than in the latest volume from the Dutch masters ...

Not looking thematically dissimilar to the backdrop that Frank Lopez took a bullet in front of when Tony Montana returned from an attack by the world's worst hitmen (RIP Octavio the clown), this Asian New Balance pack is based on some tropical cocktails like the tequila sunrise and other such concoctions. There's even a 'Magnum PI' look in the mixer too, but the official line on this trio is that the MH574 is some sunset as seen from ...

Lately the adidas Originals designers have been pulling it out the bag with makeups. Some other brands have had us pulling gas faces with their sullying of classics, but adidas have toned down the madness and pumped out some of the most memorable remixes of our favourites lately. For every mental 'Games Pack' there's something like this at the moment- pretty offbeat, but extremely wearable. Another policy we keep is that you can go a little crazy on the ...