crooked tongues magazine News Features

Once upon a time we pleaded for brands to make something different to the slew of deck shoe knockoffs that flooded the market. Then we got the phenomenon of the performance piece that isn’t — a wave of athletic-inspired lifestyle shoes. While we’re PUMA-heads to the fullest, the Blaze of Glory gets no love here. Nike’s less storied work on existing lasts and tooling can be variable and some of Reebok’s new bits and pieces are actually ...

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When the Strata was introduced to the Ransom by adidas range, it was a pleasant break from a plethora of boots that looked like they could stomp diamonds into granules. It's been interesting watching the line unveil, and just when we thought we'd seen as much as we needed to see, this season really comes correct. The wave of pieces set to drop later in the year could've come straight out of a hunting superstore, seemingly ditching ...

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Now this right here is a shoe that we needed to talk about in depth. We all see shoes a little earlier than necessary, and after it made some blog and Twitpic rounds a long, long time ago, the Nike SB Koston One has been on the hit list around these parts. Seeing the finished shoe a few months ago conferred that our excitement surrounding the shoe was justified — from the stitching to the tongue branding to the drop-in Lunar ...

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This is a shoe that slipped through the gaps a few weeks back. Back when a slew of V-Series Nike returned in 2004, we saw some excellent colourways — both solo and as part of a pack. This supportive shoe is a sacred one and this makeup is actually one of our favourite shoes of 2011. It's just a great makeup — we might be tempted to give this model a similar colourway if we were ever given the opportunity to ...

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PUMA Baskets are one of the greatest sneaker designs ever. They’ve been sullied by some truly off key retros of late, and while our old friend and CT veteran Chris Law would probably take us to task over it, whenever we’ve seen a leather version of the Clyde, we’ve always thought somebody was missing the point and that it should’ve just been labeled a Basket. They evoke that era of 1992 retro fever when brands cottoned ...

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The release of the Nike LunarSpider+ last year as part of the Jun-re imagined GYAKUSOU collection had us hyped in the build up, but the reality was a little more awkward. It’s a seriously slim shoe, and we’re talking a whole size up. Even then, non-narrow feet were going to struggle. This is clearly a shoe designed for an Asian consumer and an Asian foot shape — it’s pretty much a track spike with road traction. Lunarlon in ...

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You can never quite pre-empt what might get Tier Zero or Quickstrike status when it comes to Nike Sportswear. We've seen plenty of pieces executed like this that are carefully chosen bricks and mortar only when it comes to retail, but with their lack of a fragment logo, these are a little more widely available. The Hiroshi touch elevated this model from occasional High Street oi-oi-saveloy laddish looks to something more desirable. Actually, that was the later incarnation of ...

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The Nike Zoom Kobe VI is one of our favourite new shoes, so we had to include this makeup in the News. A basketball shoe in football colours makes for an unlikely mix of national sports, but in the case of Eric Avar’s recent lower cut Kobe creations it makes a lot of sense. Why? Because Mr. Bryant really, really likes football — so much so that his signature shoe is based on a football boot cut. He’s not ...

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The EQT Support stays golden. Nobody can topple this one, and the Remodel never reaches this style’s heights. Like all the best examples of early 1990s tech, it hints at brands panicking as a decade dawned and generating designs so out there, that they stay contemporary in 2011. This design is almost twenty years old and it still makes our minds boggle with that mix of absolute performance that somehow improves the shoe’s appearance — the hefty heel counter ...

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Air Force 1s have been a part of this site since day one. It helped that Crooked's genesis coincided with the Uptown making a full-blown UK debut and that the site launched when US and co.jp exclusives were at their best. Since then, heavyweight campaigns and ID accessibility have taken some of the secret-society mystique from the shoe. After all, a shoe that barely needed to advertise, shouldn't need to make any effort. Still, when it's ...

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The adidas Gazelle had long been a favourite of ours through reappropriation. It never had the floppy, skinny look of the Samba, and with that extra substance you could always do more with this model. Going back to 1968, this training shoe's done an awful lot, but we like to go back to the essence — skaters definitely know the power of this model (hence the Busenitz editions in the early days of adidas Skateboarding), and we were raised with ...

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You all know about the Nike Free Run+ 2 by now, don't you? You know that it's the debut of the latest iteration of the 5.0 Free sole, that it's made for training and that the overlays and laser cutting pay tribute to the structure of the foot. You probably know that it's made to improve your foot strength and stability. They're certainly blowing up at street level on their own accord (especially the ...

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No, we haven’t turned into an art blog because the store’s got chinos in it — we attended this launch courtesy of Vans. Visiting Paris and seeing the new Eric Elms exhibition exposed two things — firstly, Eric is a real-deal graphic designer in a world where rudimentary PhotoShop skills and a head full of reference points gets you self-declared designer status on LinkedIn and a thoroughly good bloke. The show is excellent too — porn, canines, 'Faith In Graffiti,' bright ...

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During its pre-order limbo we grew to love this adidas release even more than we did before. Since last summer Originals have been dropping some colourful treats for fans of the Superstar into their ranges without any hype or excessive announcement. This is still our favourite incarnation of the shelltoe (salutes to all of those tireless shoe weirdos who pushed this silhouette through) and we're getting the kinds of colourways that might have given us seizures if we'd ...

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Some shoes should be kept low-key. Others can carry themselves in a variety of guises — the Samba is one of them. Naturally, there's limitations (look to the FiveTwo-3 collection to see this shoe pushed to a crappy extreme), but this football training shoe can work with a blast of colour like Lemon Yellow effortlessly. And curiously, some of the bolder adidas makeups of classics prove unexpectedly easy to pull off too — something in those silhouettes absorbs the silly stuff ...

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It doesn’t feel like much time has passed since we were being assailed by Jordan V reissues, but its been nearly five years. That’s almost half a decade since Tinker Hatfield and Michael Jordan caused mild fanboy pandemonium with a Q&A session followed by a quick drop of Grape reissues. We were spolit. The materials on those purple-accented masterpieces creased in seconds — we don’t think Jerry Seinfeld or John Goodman in ‘King Ralph’ mode would have ...

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The nice thing about having an archive and brand presence that’s an untapped resource is that a collaborator can make a difference if there’s a mutual respect. For us, Saucony's back catalogue is an untapped resource – we knew about the Jazz, Shadow 5000, 6000 (and some earlier, late ‘80s incarnations), the V-Grid 9000, Courageous, (that Floorlords variation stays classic) the Blaze and the Spot Bilt pieces retroed under the Saucony name. But the Master Control? That wasn ...

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Can we commence with a disclaimer? We gave these shoes those filmic monikers, not Reebok — just in case lawyers are watching. There's no point trying to find any underlying logic in most concept-led colourways and the shoe they're applied to. That would be like trying to find an entry on this site that doesn't break at least a couple of grammatical rules. What we have here is two variations on a shoe from 1994, with makeups inspired ...

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There's not a lot of shoes more aped than Converse's Jack Purcell model. You wouldn't expect a badminton sneaker to make so much noise, but this one's in our personal countdown when it comes to design classics. Originally designed for Jack Purcell by the Goodrich Rubber Company, Converse's acquisition of the model in the early 1970s was definitely one of their wiser moves. Laden with proto technologies — because everybody needs shock absorbing properties and posture-improving ...

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The Beastie Boys shaped our childhood, teen and adult years with their output. And that isn't just confined to the brace of classic albums and slept-on B-sides either. Those side projects — 'Grand Royal' magazine and the X-Large (remember when they switched from paper catalogues to online-only? We thought that streetwear online would neve last) empire were significant moments for us too. Our early exposure to BAPE, Supreme ads and the resurrection of the adidas Campus arrived through Ad-Rock, Mike ...

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There's precious little else that we can write about the PUMA Suede other than that it's one of the best sustained reissue projects in a while. The fine efforts of team UNFTD might avert some eyes back to the Clyde, but in terms of fit and feel we think the Suede takes it. Now some folk may have gotten over that dismay at the excess of gold foiled letters, we can look back at what PUMA have put ...

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2013

• June (13)
• May (24)
• April (24)
• March (26)
• February (27)
• January (28)

crooked tongues magazine News Features

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Ransom by adidas Strata Mesh

Eric Koston Nike SB Q&A

Nike Air Venture Vintage Neutral Grey/Blue/Green

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Nike LunarSpider+ 'Camo'

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Nike Zoom Kobe VI 'FC Barcelona'

adidas EQT Support Running Lemon/Blue

Nike Sportswear Denim Air Force 1 Low

Purple adidas Originals Gazelle OG

Nike Sportswear Free Run+ 2 City Pack 'London'

Eric Elms 'No Way Out!' @ Galerie Lazarew

adidas Superstar 80s Yellow/White

Lemon Yellow adidas Samba

Wolf Grey Air Jordan V

Saucony Elite & Bodega Master Controls

Reebok Pump Fury: "Tron" & "Purple Rain"

Garment Dyed Converse Jack Purcells

CT x Beastie Boys 'Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 2' Competition

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