crooked tongues magazine News Features

The ALIFE footwear collection for this season seems far better than the last few swathes of simple sneakers they've dropped. The little details on their shoes give 'em that point-of-difference — the Kennedy Hi with a canvas Wallabee-style upper and Huarache-style lining was particularly fresh. The original Public Estate Mid's slight aura of Sk8-Hi with the forefoot perforations, chukka cut and hint of boat shoe in the heel detail and leather laces was okay, but it felt a little ...

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What’s with all the simple shoes? It’s impossible not to wander into a showroom or store and see low-key shoes everywhere. Most of them don’t even seem to want recognition — they’re just there. Most of the time we’d rather have a pair of Eras or Authentics on our feet if we were seeking that look, but we can’t knock anyone for wanting to cash in. Just don’t expect us to care. We know ...

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Despite the relatively basic looks, this is a big ol' gang-bang of a shoe. Reebok have cherry picked some old elements and crammed it into a single shoe with the Omni Run. In the office we're undecided on how effective the merger of looks actually is, but the by product is a pub shoe from the future — a time when we're in no doubt that there'll be an alcohol ban in public houses, or something equally idiotic ...

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What else can be done with this staple shoe? The problem with the Converse All Star is that while it offers a canvas in the literal and figurative sense for all manner of madcap imagery, patterning and texture, but if you want to keep it simple, all you can do is rinse the Pantone book. And we've seen All Stars in all the colours of the rainbow. So we welcome colourways like this that go back to basics. In ...

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The ALIFE footwear line's got a spot of history to it. Nowadays everyone's launching their own line, having noticed the cost-effective benefits of going back-to-basics on a solo mission, rather than the dual-label business model — we were scheming a line a few years back, but it fell by the wayside. We could have been trillionaires by now. We've got to give it to ALIFE for really setting off that style with Ritefoot (which earned them a legal ...

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We always welcome any good ASICS GT IIs into the fold. One thing that's long mystified us is why running shoes got so ugly. Did it become uncool to wear anything aesthetically pleasing? Was that treated as non-hardcore behaviour? Looking in dedicated running shops, there's some strange-looking shoes on the shelves - and we're talking strange meaning bad here — with some horrendous looking gimmicks on them too. It's not like less-is-more was implemented as a reaction to ...

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Maybe the Easter sunshine has been blasting our heads too much, but designs like this are looking increasingly appealing. Reebok seem to have taken things back to the lab and done some shrewd recruiting, resulting in a roster that's mixing the archive with some new technologies pretty damned well. We still can't get down with Zig-Tech quite yet, because it's a little too much for our fragile minds to take in — too foamy and fancy compared to ...

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The ASICS Gel Lyte III has had a phoenix-like resurgence since 2005. Those retros seemed to resonate with an audience who remembered them from the first time around, but it took Patta to elevate the design to a new generation. Then our friend Ronnie Fieg went from shinier makeups to some variations that took the shoe global with an audience who previously never knew the shoe existed. To push this weirdo split-tongue design with an emphasis on simple colour combinations ...

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Allow us to shift focus from the feet for a second. Penfield aren't playing at the moment and the brand's been putting in work lately when it comes to showcasing the fruits of their labours. Enlisting friends of Crooked, Mr. Neil Bedford and Mr. Glenn Kitson to work on their Spring/Summer lookbook paid off. It feels a great deal more naturalistic than the wally in the woods imitators, which pretty much encapsulates Penfield's products too — good ...

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We're going to have to visit a hype shoe embassy of some kind to get our late passes stamped for this one. We should've covered the Jordan 2011 a couple of months ago, but the delivery got spectacularly delayed. So here they are. We weren't fans of the Jordan 2010. I fact, we haven't enthused about a Jordan instalment since part XXIII and that was years ago, but the 2011's reawakened a passion for this ...

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The Reebok GL 6000 is an office favourite from the woven label Classics division. We can see Reebok giving this model a serious push after the model's 2009 reintroduction, but time will tell whether it becomes a crossover favourite. The shoe harks back to the 1986 era, before ERS, Hexalite and Pump made everything so darned fancy, and when Reebok were giving Nike a serious run for their money. Reebok weren't a cheap brand either, and their running ...

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HUF's been developing a footwear line with a strong work rate thus far. After killing it at dual-brand level with the help of Mr. Benny Gold, the HUF label is a fine attempt at going solo and avoiding a reliance on outside assistance to make smart shoes. The big 'H' pieces have been cool, and there's been some smart little details that reflect the brand's preoccupation with graphics, but for Spring/Summer, it all makes a lot ...

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We haven’t updated the features page in a while. Apologies for that — the internet is too full of barely updated websites, drifting like ghost ships. We’re trying to not be one of them. On his flying visit to London yesterday, we chatted with Mr. Eddie Cruz about the Clyde project that Undefeated just introduced. We like Clydes and Mr. Cruz, like his business partner James, is a good bloke. As an extra bonus, Mr. Adam Leaventon ESQ. from ...

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Nike's Field Trainerr is one of those oddities cast into the line to make use of existing lasts and tooling. The big difference here is that the shoe's actually pretty good. Of course, this one's not going to get a zillion dollar marketing spend hurled at it, but the by-product is a nice distillation of football (just in case any of our American brethren are reading, we're talking soccer here) training shoes and classic athletic style ...

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The PUMA Clyde's's been through a few incarnations since that glut of them a few years back. Despite the power of the shoe (we still think Solebox absolutely nailed it on then collaboration front) we've always put it behind the Suede in our affections because that slender silhouette and big fit on the 2005 Clyde reissues meant we had to do some sizing maths before purchase (a whole size down). The Suede and States resonate with us ...

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Looking out the window, it's Air Max 90 time. Collating the top 50 Air Max 90 colourways for Complex last year, it became clear that this shoe wasn't cutting it in the contemporary makeup stakes, The Dizzee version was great and the reptile effect versions that were meant to drop were cancelled, despite looking like classics. Instead we got one dull version after another. That wouldn't jar so much if this wasn't a shoe that we ...

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We still think that the Reebok Pump Fury could be in the top twenty sneaker designs of all time. It's a masterpiece of futureshock that still stands up in 2011 as something truly astonishing. Of course, it loses some points in terms of wearability — it's not easy to wear with loose denim, and the framework structure isn't necessarily conducive to bad weather, but as an experiment in how far the Pump system could be pushed to the ...

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Remember the coloured collection of Nike Match colourways reworked by Jun and Hiroshi last summer? The orange, black and greens were the truth. It might be easy to apply a block colour to a basic silhouette, but for some reason that lettering and jagged stripe detail around the midsole makes these doubly ill, like their predecessors and the even rarer Japan-only variations that had the dirtied-up soles that arrived a year prior. It just works — it's neither regressive nor ...

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The Nike Air Pegasus series set it off back in the day when it came to everymen turning into athletes. Now every person seems to be a running guru, flooding social media with their times and distances and exchanging tips. We're happy for you, but nobody else gives a shit. We're waiting for the bores to give it up through injury or apathy and get fat again. But that's nothing new — the Pegasus, Destiny, Terra T/C ...

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The Forum Mid Lite is a basketball favourite put on a crash diet. It only took a couple of rival brands stripping down some classics at trend level (think Maxim 1 and sonic welded 574s) for adidas Originals to have a go too. First we got some Superstars and now we get a Forum taken down to some bare basics. The Forum has never been a lightweight shoe — it's a premium affair and that strap, heel counter and leather ...

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This version of the Nike Zoom Match is a decent one. We’ve seen several variations since Hiroshi helped engineer the shoe’s comeback on the basis of the barely-there branding and the bike culture tie-ins. There haven’t been any fundamental fails in any colourway executions so far, but Jun’s makeovers were standouts. Usually we’re adverse to the wilful minimalism that tries to disguise a sneaker from being a big-brand sneaker (we saw a lot of that ...

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2013

• June (12)
• May (24)
• April (24)
• March (26)
• February (27)
• January (28)

crooked tongues magazine News Features

ALIFE Public Estate Mid Woodstock

etnies Plus Guild Plus

Reebok Omni Run

Converse All Star Low Black/Blue

ALIFE Everybody High Official

ASICS GT IIs for Spring/Summer

More Reebok 3D Ultralite releases

More ASICS Gel Lyte IIIs for Spring/Summer

Crooked Tongues x Highsnobiety Penfield Giveaway

Air Jordan 2011

More Reebok GL 6000s

HUF Tahoe

PUMA & UNDFTD Clydes: Eddie Cruz & Adam Leaventon Q&A

Nike Sportswear Field Trainer

PUMA & UNDFTD 'Stripe-Off' Clydes

More Nike Sportswear Air Max 90s for Spring/Summer

Reebok Pump Fury Grey/Purple/Blue

Nike Sportswear fragment x UNDER COVER Match Classics Spring/Summer 2011

Nike Sportswear Air Pegasus 83 Navy/Yellow

adidas Originals Forum Mid Lite

Nike Sportswear Zoom Match Classic

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