crooked tongues magazine News Features

The adidas Consortium adiCup packs are surprisingly on-point. Not because we doubted adidas's abilities, but because tie-in releases with top-tier status can have a tendency of getting a little too Rolex and prawn sandwich. Now it's begun and everyone's a football expert for a month. The World Cup releases have been plentiful so far. Some have been good. Others not so good. These releases are well-executed. Like Dennis Busenitz's adidas Skateboard pro model, which took a football boot upper and fused it with a Spezial sole unit, the VOTARY is an interesting shoe. A Copa Mundial themed upper and a Gazelle sole genuinely works.

We're involved in the adiCup shenanigans in a week's time, and we're looking forward to embarrassing some media types over at Somerset House. For this project, Exit magazine have aligned themselves with the Newburgh Street No.6 store to create a decent-looking shoe and kit that's got more than a passing resemblance to Argentina's team colours. An interesting reference point. Maybe they're looking to the Hand of God for assistance on the big day. Still, it looks good.

High Snobiety and No.74's Berlin colours are tasteful too, and while UNDFTD and Arkitip's interpretations are tremendous, but it's Masterpiece Sound, allied with the spellcheck-unfriendly Houyhnhnm who created the most immediate collection. Presumably riffing on their frequent soundclashing, they - like Exit - picked another nation's colours via a Jamaican theme. It really works. All these sets feel cohesive. The shirts included in each set aren't some afterthought - they're well-designed, and the holdalls are high quality too. No other brand has the football heritage to do this right, and adidas haven't bastardised the archive and scored an own goal. They've created something very premium indeed, and we're not just saying that because we're in the adiCup tournament. If anything we should be trash-talking about the opposition's handiwork.

These packs - a shoe, shirt and bag with each makeup - are now on sale in the Crooked Tongues store and numbers are low. They're worth your time.