crooked tongues magazine News Features

Normally we'd have dropped a Bread & Butter roundup by now, but brands are getting jumpy about leaked shots, and we're too busy to waste time explaining that we're there as both buyers and press. So we didn't get much in the way of images - be ready for Gourmet getting all Bally on us, some All Court excellence from Nike, a fine fourth KZK collection from adidas, UK-made 576s in simple colours, Converse looking beyond Chuck and Jack, ripstop PRO-Keds 69ers, plus ASICS dropping a killer Gel Lyte reissue. The rest of the show was pretty lame. So we'll pad out this News post by taking a look at the latest fragment remix of a Classic.

Sometimes the preoccupation with all things clean, wearable, staple, and all the rest can make for mediocrity. The original fragment Zoom Classics took a shoe that was okay - we'd be lying if we didn't feel it looked like a forty pound pricepoint JD shelf dweller (though does anyone else recall a subtle Safari-themed Wimbledon in JD a couple of years back?) for much of our lifetimes, gave it a FP Campus style colour and suede execution, and made it vastly more appealing. The fragment association certainly helped - it did for a black version too, but these? This is an emperor's new colourway situation right here. Perforated Swooshes can set a shoe off just right, but here, that white and gold looks like it could have been up for grabs in a high street spot next to jewel branded Cortez makeups. Maybe that was the point, but we doubt it.

We can appreciate that the minimised branding and heavy dose of white sits with the shoe's court legacy, and that the materials are good, but the adidas Tournament collection has been putting out better than this lately, using a parallel palette. Additionally, Wood Wood and Nike proved that there's benefits to pushing the envelope with the LunarWood late last year. There's nowt here to find objectionable, but there's certainly nothing to get excited about at all.