crooked tongues magazine News Features

There was a time when Nike speckling a sole and using purples and greys with a blast of pop would make us run around excitedly, wondering, when, where, how many and how much. That time was 2002, when seeing an ACG-themed collection of Footscapes and more would send us into a shoe-induced mania. That formula has become a little played-out (though the QS Huarache trio was excellent), but occasionally a project drags us back in again. The joy of All Conditions Gear is that—and this applies to outdoor gear in general too—you can get a little wild with the colours with a certain immunity, and Nike's colourway bods went to town from the late '80s to the early ' 90s. For some reason, the gaudy becomes acceptable when balanced with muddier tones. They made that into an artform.

Stick it on a Dunk and we'll pull a Simon Cowell "Next" scowl. Stick it on something like the Lunar Elite+ and you've got our attention. This never reaches the heights of the Wood Wood LunarWood (crack for your feet), but it runs pretty close. The Lunar Elite+'s everyman runner feel with Dynamic Support, No-Sew and Flywire is one of the best shoes we've seen all year—especially in that launch makeup that seemed to nod to the Flow and Huarache palette, representing for the new breed of running pieces. It's light and comfortable as hell too. We wondered when the fresh roster of performance pieces would hit trend level in a non-hybrid way, going the whole hog rather than being represented by tweaks or mere midsole transplants.

This Tier Zero debut for the Lunar Elite Trail Mid+ ups the height to a mid and replaces mesh with nylon alongside some '95-style lacing. Then they went and referenced the mighty Terra ACG (we like to pretend that that horrendous Terra ACG CI thing from 2008 never happened) on the purple, pink, black and challenge red version and a women's Lava High from late '89 on the electric green and pink version. It works well, feeling like it was created with our strangely specific needs in mind. Mid and high cut runners seem to be becoming a recurring theme at the moment. As these hit the usual TZ account spots globally (landing on these shores in the usual brace of boutiques, concessions and spaces—to the best of our knowledge—in the next week or so), the hype is brewing for the more performance-centric (but crossover nonetheless) Undercover 'GYAKUSOU' collection that appears next month. The gap between trend-level and "proper" performance is closing again, and we approve wholeheartedly.