crooked tongues magazine News Features

Yeah, you've seen shoes carry the premium selling point before, but if you've been following Gourmets work, you know that they really mean it. Nobody at this brand has slouched when it comes to materials before, but this time they've created one of the most definitive mergers of sneaker and formal shoe to date, using Horween Leather's famed cowhide. This Chicago-based tannery have been supplying the likes of Alden and Timberland (for their Abington line that ...

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Reebok's Pump Fury's been getting the full treatment over the last couple of seasons. We don't know how popular it will ever prove Stateside to our buddies who favour the bigger and more structured releases, but in Asia people get this shoe and the appointment of Verbal as a creative director could give this classic a new lease of life. Some of the most impressive designs of all time seem to hark back to the class of ...

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We actually covered these a few weeks back, but the images were stock ones that were pretty and all but never offered any clues as to how premium these Nike Sportswear Air Max 90 VT Quickstrikes actually are. If there had been a standard Air Max 90 in this makeup we would have become ill with excitement, but in Vac Tech form they've still got us bugging. Why? Because that silhouette isn't compromised by the nubuck application's ...

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Basketball shoes seem to have taken a serious evolutionary leap of late and these signature shoes from adidas's performance wing maintain that progression. adidas have gone all out for Derrick Rose's latest. Just as Zoom helped redefine Nike's basketball division, the Crazy Light concept and the adiZero method of building a shoe from nothing is yielding some interesting results. We'd love to see the Feet You Wear and EQT era matched and while looks seemed to ...

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adidas Originals just gave us an excuse to talk about trainers and hip-hop again. We've been trying to gauge just how important the Run-DMC and adidas connection was back in the late 1980s and it's bigger than anything we could summarise here. In fact, we got into an office, email and Facebook debate over the collection's lack of inclusion in a Complex collaborations list a few weeks back, but it was undeniably bigger than a mere colourway ...

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It'll pass over plenty of heads, but releases like this are pretty important. It's good to see Nike pay homage to the essence of the Air Force 1. Before the crazy anniversary variations and before you could buy them in the UK (shouts to Passenger for stocking the highs in big and small sizes back in the early '90s though), there was that NYC reverence for this chunky soled icon. We owe New York shoe culture a sizable ...

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We've put the Nike LeBron 9 in this section before, but that was just excitable nonsense based on conversations, quick glances and jpg scrutiny. Now we've worn them and explored every panel, we're truly sold on these. Put simply, these are one of the best basketball shoes we've ever seen from a technical standpoint. After being assailed by reissues, this model puts so much into the mix that it makes up for that incessant retro nostalgia ...

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Gum makes things good. There's always time for a PUMA Suede showcase here and these two makeups are excellent. Contrast colour Formstripes and semi translucent rubber can misfire, but twinned with more muted uppers, they always work. These were a breakthrough in the late 1960s and they're still a perfect shoe — last year the burgundy and cinnamon variations blew our mind with their simplicity and pure vision of what makes the Suede work and the Shadow Society is ...

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On first sight we weren't feeling the adidas B. Snowboarding Winterball at all. Everything just looked so bulbous and basic that it was a shock to the system, but after handling these, we've come to appreciate the level of quality these shoes carry. Kazuki Kuraishi's KZK releases were one of the collaborative standouts of the last five years and it's good to see that he's still involved in projects like this. And as with ObyO ...

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Everyone's making a boot for the winter. Nike's at it with the Air Force 1 Duckboot, adidas Originals are at it with the rubber-toed B. Snowboards by KZK reinterpretation of the KBall and Supra are at it with the Douglas Boot. We loved the Henry Boot for weighing next to nothing, making full use of TUF's near-indestructible properties and actually being skateable in a Tom Penny (and this design is more akin to his infamous Columbia boots ...

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The Nike Blazer seems to have broken through to the other side. After the early '00s retros used to hit the saleracks with a vengeance (we loved the black/white leather versions from the Foot Locker sale shelves for twenty quid) and the fat swoosh '73 reissue remained a hard sell, we sneaker weirdos seemed to be the sole supporters. We love the Blazer for being a pure ambassador for the young Nike brand alongside the Bruin and Cortez, with ...

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It's that time. Our Crooked Tongues & New Balance Made in England 1500s go live at midnight and we thought we'd offer a little summary (well, more like a purge of our hard drives) of the Crooked Tongues New Balance running shoe projects between 2004 and 2007. We'd forgotten about some stuff ourselves and we even had a quick conversation with Mr. C-Law about the original CT NB 576 project where he explains the reason behind those little ...

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A year after the introduction of the first Nike GYAKUSOU line with UNDERCOVER and Jun Takahashi, we're seeing more interesting developments on the footwear front. If you've been paying attention to the gradual evolution of the apparel which — despite coming at a hefty RRP — is genuinely progressive in a regressive era, with the third collection being the best to date as it merges some fleece-effect fabrics with some of the most innovative paneling we've ever seen on ...

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Historically, Women's Air Max makeups have been some of the strongest ever, but that trend seems to have subsided. It's a shame, because the desperate attempts to squeeze into the biggest size at Foot Locker, tearing out sockliners to try and get an extra half-a-size of space seemed like a rite-of-passage. Curiously, with the Air Max 1 being the new official queuewear shoe of choice (after Dunk-mania subsided) with slim chinos and a five-panel hat, we haven't ...

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We saw a couple of Quickstrike colourways of this shoe earlier in the year, but now the Nike Sportswear Air Force 1 Duckboot has gone inline and we're still backing it. We couldn't fathom why the original drop got such a mixed response. Some eulogised this model and some seemed to loathe it. Having roadtested a pair during the colder months, we can testify that they perform where needed without the insane bulk of a pair of Sorels ...

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When it comes to sneakers, for the purposes of padding out content, everything's an icon, an archetype or a classic these days, but there's plenty of Reebok output from the early '80s that's justifies the name. The Reebok Classic seems to have been unfairly maligned with a snide "chav" tag, but we love its authenticity as a staple in British culture, with the model becoming the everyman's shoe of choice and having its own collector culture ...

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It's nice to know the provenance of your footwear. With New Balance's Flimby factory being UK-based, they had no problem with our request for shots of our Made in England duo of 1500s being put together. That's nice, because usually you wouldn't want to see how your shoes were made any more than you'd want to see the process that led to the mechanically constituted sausages you merrily scoff on a hungover Sunday. Ignorance is ...

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Gourmet's Uno is a range mainstay that's conservative enough for some, yet imbued with enough referential eccentricity to make it a trademark piece for the brand. We see so much come and go, and we saw too many Sk8 Hi cloners at tradeshows to follow the majority of indies who sussed that vulc could be a factory farmed cash cow that we lost faith in the indies, but Gourmet's appreciation of the bizarre and eccentric shoes we ...

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More of those ol' robotic futuristic George Jetson crazy joints? Oh yes. Nike Sportswear Vac Tech Air Force 1s have already made three appearances here and these are another new look for this Uptown redux. All suede AF1s are the best AF1s and these take that aesthetic into a strange, tactile place. A few years back, this model would have had nothing but blank stares and screwfaces. Now audiences are a little more receptive of Forces with significant modifications and ...

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We find the Jordan XV, ummm...difficult, but we can get on with the Jordan chapter that preceded it. 1998's XIV wasn't as good as the XIII — especially for us conservative Brits. The Lows were ugly compared to the mids and we still (controversially) don't think the leather and Durabuck mixes worked as well as the solitary material upper on the 1999 White/Varsity Red editions and some of the 2005 retros benefited from a simplicity that ...

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We won't pretend we ever cared much about the 1988 Nike Sky Force on its release. We were too hyped on basketball shoes with Nike Air, like the Assault, Revolution or Air Force III to pay attention to a non-Air, affordable basketball design. And while it's not as impactful as the mighty Court Force (with which it shares similarities), the Sky Force looks a lot better with age. Still, we were a little disappointed with the difference in ...

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At Crooked Tongues we like reggae an awful lot. That's why we had to get David Rodigan for the 2010 BBQ, but we're equally obsessed with Stone Love, Saxon, Addis and the legendary Mighty Crown sound system. If you've ever been to a clash or dance in Japan you might have seen some Mighty Crown affiliates or at least some DJs, selectors and artists inspired by what this seminal system has achieved since the early 1990s, and ...

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2012

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crooked tongues magazine News Features

Gourmet & Horween Leather

Reebok Pump Fury Yellow/Navy

Nike Sportswear Air Max 90 VT Premium QS "Haystack"

adidas adiZero Rose 2

adidas Originals 'My adidas' Run-DMC Superstar 80s

Nike Sportswear Air Force 1 Low "Finish Your Breakfast" Strickland edition

Nike LeBron 9 Black/Red/White

PUMA Suede Eco

adidas Originals x B. Snowboards x Kazuki Kuraishi Winterball

Supra Douglas Boot

More Nike Sportswear Blazer Mid Vintages

Running Things: A Quick CT & NB Retrospective

Nike & UNDERCOVER GYAKUSOU Zoom Structure+ 15

Nike Sportswear Air Max 1 Wine/Anthracite

Nike Sportswear Air Force 1 Duckboot 'Beachtree'

Reebok Classic Leather Ultralite Thermo

Making the Crooked Tongues New Balance 1500s

Gourmet Uno L 'Camo'

Nike Sportswear Air Force 1 Low VT Premium 'Medium Grey'

Air Jordan XIV Light Graphite

Nike Sportswear Winter Sky Force 88 Mids

Nike Sportswear x Mighty Crown Dunk Hi & Sky Force 88 Low

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