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The sports footwear equivalent of a sugary, milky cup of tea after a lost weekend, the Reebok Phase II still feels like a detox trainer. This resurrection of the Phase II is still keeping us happy almost a year after this design — retroed a few times over the years but never this well — was brought back in a quiet storm of definitive form. If you're of such a delicate disposition that the red, white and blue was too much, steel, blue and white is an even more subdued interpretation. We strive to avoid living in the past, but running shoe design really seemed to hit an apex in the mid '80s, before cutaways and visible technologies broke up the party. Reebok keep it failsafe with the Woven Label line and the Phase II is elegant and still strangely British. On one hand this is a pub shoe perfected in leather, suede and nylon, with that dual-density sole and no-nonsense heel counter, but at the core, it remains a very sober sneaker. Strange days indeed when we find ourselves loving this kind of shoe over the usual attention seekers, but the Phase II stays unf*ckwithable and best of all, unf*cked with. Apologies for the self-censoring — this is a family-friendly establishment.

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