crooked tongues magazine News Features

The adidas Top Ten Hi is pretty untouchable in our eyes, but it seems to have suffered some odd executions of late. You can't top the original white, red and navy colourway that the shoe originally dropped in — we last saw that makeup earlier last year, and the aesthetic standards remain. Undefeated's version with Estevan Oriol on board was an overlooked banger too that brought out the best in the Top Ten, but who's got that kind of money to lay down on a shoe? As former Golden State Warrior, Rick Barry concluded his career with the Houston Rockets in the late '70s, he was recruited by adidas to work on a performance shoe project.

Bringing in a top 10 of players, including Doug Collins, Kevin Grevey, Marques Johnson, Adrian Dantley, Bob Lanier, Bobby Jones, Billy Knight, Sidney Wicks, Mitch Kupchak and Kermit Washington, they created a new performance piece to usher in a new decade. Now, a similar project would yield a featherlight moonboot. In 1979, things were a little simpler — bordering on quaint — but the positioning of laceholes, the panels, outsole and every other recognisable element of the shoe proved hugely influential on the next wave of adidas court designs, setting the standard for some personal favourites.

This is the sort of design that's future-proof. Who's going to be fiending for the adidas KOBE 31 years down the line? We're guessing nobody will, but if we're wrong, we'll be too haggard and old by that point for the told-you-so treatment. So what about this duo? More adidas Originals inline releases that get it pretty right. We could live without the metal stud branding, and the basket branding on the original is so perfect to us that the jagged re-imagining can't compete, but the mix of leather, suede and denim-style canvas with hiker-style laces, all in ultra-tasteful browns, greys and blacks, makes them better than expected. The wildcard colour used in the contrast stitch on the side works too. Not bad at all - we're still big fans of the kids takedowns of the shoe, but for the grown-ups, these get the job done too, and they're available to pre-order in the Crooked Tongues store now, and set for a July release...