crooked tongues magazine News Features

The Nike Lunar Wood+ is a new shoe that's carries a spot of mystique in the office. We weren't actually sure as to whether last winter's phenomenal TZ version in cahoots with Wood Wood was all we'd ever see of this model. To be honest—as much as we loved the shoe—we wanted it to be the one and only. A Lunarlon shoe based on '89's ACG Wildwood with a lowkey but hugely effective night time graffiti mission theme? That and the special edition box made it one of the best Nike colabs ever. When we realised that it was coming back, we were a little disappointed. Not because these makeups aren't decent, but because it stomped all over the shoe's legendary, seemingly one-off status. But we're suckers for Dynamic Support on a good-looking shoe.

Some updates of sneaker are terrible. Think Rift 2...think Footscape 2...we know those neoprene fails are still burnt onto your eyes. For some reason, updates of the Wildwood—a favourite round these parts—are excellent. The Wildedge GTX was the realness, and one day, folk will realise how amazing that shoe was, particularly in OG Wildwood shades, or the ultra slept-on women's variation in a Terra ACG palette. The Lunar Wood continued that tradition of strong remakes. Our only issue with the TZ version was that No-Sew on the swoosh went a little awry, as a few of us lost our branding during wanders and ending up looking like tramps.

The mere combination of ACG branding and Lunar foam ticks a few boxes in terms of appeal, and with the Lunar Elite Mid+, Macleays and LunarPath arriving on these shores shortly, we knew these would be swept along for a wave of performance-influenced trend-level releases in brown recycled boxes rather than orange packaging. The Lunar Mariah set it off, but it seems to have passed the baton to some more offroad takes on Lunar language for the coming months. In terms of colourways there's plenty of crossover too. Velvet Brown/Black-Red Plum is a fair sequel to the Wood Wood variations use of a tried and tested makeup, and the recurring AM95 style palette of Cool Grey/Black-Volt lets the Lunarlon shine, with a hint of the new LunarEclipse+ colours too.

We've picked and poked like true weirdos to confirm that the branding is properly fixed on this time too. These two makeups are in the Crooked Tongues store now, and there's another colourway on its way too.