crooked tongues magazine News Features

You know that we're partial to some ACG round these parts and the progressive hiking look of the Lunar Macleay+ delivers that spirit of offroad innovation in the same quantity that another Lunar All Conditions evolution —Wood Wood's Lunar Wood+ did last year. These just get the job done and almost compensate for the ACG Salbis's no-show last year. Athletics Far East seems engineered to appease our tastes for the more offbeat (figuratively and literally) output Nike ...

It's interesting to see the reactions to the Jordan line in the UK. It seems that chapter V seems to be the preferred model, alongside parts III and IV, with a gradual tail off in interest from parts VI to VIII. Stateside, the XI creates a level of desire that's pretty much unmatched by any other shoe - people lose their minds over it. It's a masterpiece, but it just doesn't have that mass appeal in a ...

Now this right here is what a boot should look like. We should've spotlighted the Ransom by adidas Crest before, but for some reason we got distracted. So here it is in all its towering glory. The Summit's been a favourite around these parts lately—especially in the new colours, all of which are a vast improvement on earlier designs. If you can't be bothered with boots that look like boat shoes and the faint air of ...

Basketball isn't one of our native sporting languages, but we can't deny the appeal of the shoes or the fact we get carried away on the wave of bombast that Nike and Wieden+Kennedy have given us over the years with their commercials. In fact, there was a time pre-internet and certainly pre-flash video, when we only saw them between videos and Ed, Dre and T-Money banter on MTV every saturday morning, but even with that limited exposure ...

This Nike Sportswear Athletics Far East rollout had us intrigued when we clocked the lookbook a while ago.Seemingly intent on recapturing elements of a golden age of co.jp goodies that we could only gaze at on now-defunct Geocities sites and vastly expensive, catalogue-sized publications. Camouflage on a trail shoe was always something accessible to our friends in the far east, while we settled for blander looks as a golden age of Terra and ACG subsided, but there's ...

Of the entire ObyO line this season, this model—in this particular makeup—has been a favourite in the office. That doesn't necessarily hint at mass appeal in any way, shape or form, but we picked it over the all-black. That's because it looks like a Beef 'n Broc Field Boot with a Torsion bar—a Torsion Special Hi on creatine supplements. Like the best pieces in the aZX collection, this shoe celebrates adidas running technology with a ...

It's been an alright year if you were in the market for the Nike Air Max 90 in some staple colours without the usual fuss. We've had Infrareds, but now it's time for a women's colourway to make a return too. This makeup is hard. Just a straight-up classic from a time when even a feminine accent colour still appealed to the males. Nike were just on fire when these launched. Of course, shades of pink ...

The adidas ObyO KZK Gipfel has made the cut for a second season, and while it's a tough sell to some degree, with most feeling the tweaked staple shoes rather than the odder pieces, the shoe's got plenty of merits. Artillery-style brutality in the looks department twinned with some bonus features makes this piece of retro styling executed correctly. The whole Torsion hi-top movement was difficult to us. We loved the runners and tennis pieces, but the taller ...

Saucony have been giving the Shadow 5000 and 6000 models some shine in the archive stakes lately, and as they've calmed down on the concepts and focused on what's good sans stories or any of that daftness they've really found their stride. The pieces with Bodega were things of beauty, and this is one of the best examples of a Saucony shoe that straddles fanciness and simplicity and proves there's accessible forms of life in the ...

For every sensible, crowd pleasing adidas ObyO design, there's something odd to mix opinions. Unless you're Jeremy Scott, in which case everything's built to provoke and is all the better for it. That's part of the project's appeal. The Bracken is one of the bizarro additions, but we're digging them. Bill Dellinger who developed the Dellinger web assisted another Bill—Bill Bowerman at the University of Oregon—and ended up liasing with adidas with ...

Beckham's ObyO output is the everyman to the untethered lunacy of Jeremy Scott's designs (just for the record, that bear shoe is amazing) and the costly better-in-black vision that Kazuki brings to the table. Bar the Superdry leather—never a good look—David rarely offends us with his clothing options, especially when he opts for the vast jean and Timbo look. No matter how much dough you're stacking, the urge to slum it never goes. That simple ...

Part of two makeups (the burgundy sample went A.W.O.L.) set for release this weekend, some models drift in and out of Kazuki's Originals by Originals collection, but the Campus is a constant. That someone can tinker with a shoe that elicits such an emotional reaction from anyone with an interest in skating, hip-hop or design without a torch-wielding mob gathering outside their studio is down to the fact Kazuki appreciates this design, knows what makes it ...

This season, when it comes to Nike runners, the lime and grey palette is getting a rinsing. If it's not on middleground trend pieces with performance potential like the Lunar Wood, it's on the inaugural male makeup of the Lunar Eclipse, and it's on some classic runners too. Bright colours on sole units is a recurring theme at the moment. We've seen it employed on designs like the Elite before with less effective results, but as ...

While the Nike Pegasus '89 retro might not be the flatter silhouette that purists would prefer, we've yet to come across a genuinely abhorrent makeup of this model. Each one has respected the paneling, material and use of a decent accent colour to set it off. Some have certainly been better than others, but the shoe still appeals to us. That's a good thing, because compared to the Icarus designs from back in the day, until the line ...

At Crooked Tongues, our hip-hop fandom borders on fanaticism, and while we can be stuck in our ways, there's plenty of next-gen acts bringing the ruckus. Now that dust has settled from the Rapidshare rap "movement" and the wheat's been sorted from the chaff, a new breed of varsity jacket clad producers and MCs are soundtracking our working environment. The Tom Waits sampling, college-age Chiddy Bang fall into that category. Dance and hip-hop has converged in a slightly ...

Gourmet have been dropping numerically titled pieces in a range of pricepoints of late, and 'The 22' represents an entry into the vulcanized realm. Normally baked rubber is a cop out, and we've seen noble designs made unnecesarily minimal of late, but team Gourmet have chosen their reference points carefully for this more affordable autoclave-styled debut, with a very late 1970s Blazer Mid look and feel in the mix, down to that canvas foxing. The contrast canvas detailing on ...

Nike Magmas have a special place in our hearts as the rustic, slightly wizened forefather to our favourite shoes of all time. A couple of years down the line we're finally understanding how sick the TZ nylon versions were (we got stalled in covering them because the samples were  early ones—a fact of shoe coverage is that shooting any sample with ballpoint writing on the medial midsole will get you a passive-aggressive email from a brand), but those ...

We had some preview pictures of the Nike LeBron line's eighth installment a few days back, but seeing as it's on the shelves Stateside, and set to arrive in the UK shortly, we got the opportunity to take a closer look at the shoe. In the office some have deemed it too chunky to wear unless you're LeBron himself, but some factions are instant fanboys. This is a wide, wide shoe, but it isn't the longest ...

This is quite a strange shoe. We'd see the Reebok Classic Mid before, and it's an odd pic to take over-the-ankle, seeing as it's a running and leisure masterpiece that didn't need to go basketball on us. We're still undecided on this version too—presumably created with a certain type of big-sunglassed, tight jeaned character on the moodboard—as it's playing with a silhouette that captures Britain at street level in a way that ...

It seems that if your trend-level range for this winter doesn't incorporate a generous handful of shoes based on the grippy soles of Red Wings, Danners and Timbs, then you're slipping. Reebok are definitely aware of that, and this Workout Plus duo reflects that. Americana and militaristic styling (usually with ripstop) seem to be everywhere at the moment. There's something quaint about taking something that's very, very British and giving it a yankee-heritage look, even if ...

A few weeks back when we posted the Tier Zero takes on this trail version of the Nike Lunar Elites we marvelled at how effectively the mixture of muddy tones and pop colour that typifies classic ACG came together. It's the start of something big too. After an unfortunate length of time where brands (Nike was especially prone to this at trend level) seemed keen to make their shoes look as little like sneakers as possible and the notion ...