crooked tongues magazine News Features

At Crooked Tongues we love the fancier or more authentic side of shoes rather than the dressier and subdued stuff. That’s because it’s hard to write about the simple, premium stuff and because some of these shoes are just there san stories or vast reference points. What is there to say about them? But this whole Nike Sportswear NRG pack is a sign of some clean and simple stuff for the heads who are looking for no-frills footwear. We spotted the NikeNRG site a while back, but it seems to be inactive at the moment.

What you get here is good leather takes on three casual Nike silhouettes with leather sidewalls and gum soles. A Toki in Henna, a Hachi in Pecan and an Aina Chukka in Dark Cinder make up this trio and while the latter’s woven, boat shoe style retaliation to the unit-shifting basics isn’t to our tastes, the other two are decent if you can tolerate leather midsoles. The Toki is in a more deconstructed form and the swooshes are removed to leave the perforations.

While the Hachi arrived steeped in Nike running history, that’s gone in favour of one colour that eradicates that athletic. That makes these shoes a little more versatile, but there’s not much else to say. Nike’s everyday releases with the everyman in mind get a Quickstrike spin that replaces the baked rubber with leather for a more crafted feel. If you like this kind of thing, then you’ll probably want to investigate the NRG pack, but if you don’t, then you certainly never read this far down. Is it just us, or when you hear NRG, wouldn’t you expect something a little more colourful and way-out than these muted winter shades on sensible shoes? All three Supreme NRG QS releases are in the Crooked Tongues store right now…