crooked tongues magazine News Features

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 example of offroad looks done right. Where it stumbled visually was from the mix of eyelets that lacked consistency, and for Spring its been revised in line with adidas's legacy of subtle, tweaked sequels - fully D-ringed now with a better mix of pigskin and premium leathers and a non-glossy tongue tape, it's a better shoe - and if you recall our hyperbolic end-of-year summary, we were big on it the first time around.

The key to this silhouette's appeal is that it doesn't attempt to conceal the running shoe inspiration - the sloped shape takes to a more rugged, technical look with ease, and the nylon mesh keeps it from being cumbersome or heavyweight, and while there's no "give" in that toebox, in the right size (use your usual adidas footwear formula) they're incredibly comfortable too. The Campus and 7-Hole designs were excellent, justifying the hype and high-end RRP of this line, but this is still the shoe that sold us on Kazuki's Originals By Originals vision from day one. We're still suckers for "THE BRAND WITH THE 3 STRIPES" lettering on the lower tongue and the beauty of Dellinger webbing, and while that white makeup is pretty conventional, it reminds us of the fine 'Animal' ZX 600 from early 2007 and is as clean as they come, while the black version feels like a return to one of the original colours. The way the padded tongue fits isn't too all tastes, but it works well for us, especially during this madcap weather. Both makeups are available now <a href= 'http://www.crookedtongues.com/store/new-arrivals/'>in the Crooked store</a> now...