crooked tongues magazine News Features

We warned you about these. From line art alone, we knew that these were some of the best shoes of the year and possibly some of the greatest takes on a suede PUMA basketball shoe ever - States, Suedes or Clydes. These shoes are perfect. There's barely any more to say on the matter. Any criticisms of sole units and Suede/States mashups are utterly moot. GORE-TEX PUMA States. We're infatuated. It's all in that combo of sensitive suede and everyone's favourite membrane with the awesome name. The best shoes are always the ones that sound like Wu-Tang lyrics, whether it's bright yellow Air Max or NBs with exotic numbers, and these sound like the kind of thing that Ghostface or Sean Price might namecheck in a glorious moment of fly gibberish. This duo is the kind of thing we'd joke about wanting to make, but then shoot down the idea ourselves on the assumption that it could never happen. But here they are, yo.

Some Shadow Society cartel members made our idea of States heaven with that tonal purple suede upper, gum sole and GORE-TEX lining. Goddamn. If purple isn't your colour, an equally strong red take implements the waterproof, breathable material too to keep your feet dry in the kind of conditions where suede really shouldn't be. Grotesquely, we've lost a fair few pairs to sweat or external forces like airborne lager droplets — perhaps GORE-TEX could increase the lifespan? Either way, that little label on the tongue makes each shoe doubly awesome. Just when you thought you'd seen all you wanted to see in terms of suede and Form-stripes, PUMA dropped one of the projects of the year with the Shadow Society collection. Hopefully we'll see more shoes of this calibre in 2012 from this mysterious collaboration collective. The best makeups deliver the kind of shoe you daydreamed about as a kid and these are weatherproofed b-boy greatness that's set to drop very soon...