crooked tongues magazine News Features

We "blog types" added the Olympic bit to this shoe's name for convenience, so it's unofficial, but it's clear that these follow the same thinking as the five rings themed Air Max collections a couple of months back. It's also nice to finally kick back and take a look at the Nike Free Powerlines+ — this is a shoe that seems to have attracted a small but dedicated following since they just appeared in NikeTowns in some ...

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The Vans Vault range is rapidly gathering steam as the definitive special projects line. Once, it was the anonymous middleground between accessible Vans and those gloriously nichey hardcore skate Syndicate pieces, but it found its lane a couple of years ago (those Ray Barbee repros were crack) and has been constantly killing it since. Bringing designer (TAKA) in as a staffer on the project seems to have yielded big things too. The key to the best Vault drops is in ...

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The adidas Campus, the descendent of the Tournament and Greenstar, is important to us and pretty much anybody else who understands what makes a perfect shoe. The suede upper, herringbone outsole and that satisfactory shape that had the b-boy chunk if you let the laces go loose but wasn't too excessive. When adidas brought the Campus back in its finest form back in 2007, we were overjoyed. In fact, we think the Footpatrol versions might be one of the ...

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We don't know when this much-loved colourway of the equally much-loved Air Jordan VII got its "Raptor" nickname. Around the time of its first retro? The Toronto Raptors weren't even around when it first dropped in 1992. Charcoals and Black/Reds seemed to be the nicknames we knew them by back in the day. Despite a couple of efforts, we have yet to see a definitive colourway of this shoe arrive again. Is there a more early 1990s ...

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Putting camo on a slightly technical running-themed design generally doesn't result in a hard sell, but this Nike model is a more eccentric spin on something that's already pretty strange. The Nike Footscape Free is nothing new after 2007's mix of Free and Footscape Woven that seemed confined to the Far East, but this mix of two favourites seems to be getting lost in the shadow of the Footscape Woven Chukka. While the switch in soles to ...

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This is pretty much 2012 menswear embodied in a single shoe. Camouflage might be everywhere at the moment to the point where it's serving its purpose by blending in with every cool kid in any city globally, but we can't deny the appeal of military and hunting patterns on a Converse shoe. Back when the original camo Chuck Taylors dropped in the early 1980s this mix of murky patterns and a court icon was a novelty, but we ...

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These should, by rights, be the worst shoes ever. Messing with the Nike Footscape can end badly — remember the Footscape 2? The pink Year of the Pig Footscape Woven 360 hybrids? We wish we could shake those shoes from our psyches. They were monstrosities. There's a strange mix of subtle and audacious that's required to pull off a mix of beloved styles, and the hit rate's low. We think some of the other worst efforts with the ...

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adidas's ClimaCool design is one of the greatest new shoes of the early '00s. In fact, with 10 years on the clock, is it ready to get the adidas Originals treatment without any tweaks? We hope that happens soon, because adidas's vision of hyperventilated running is frequently overlooked when we're discussing iconic 21st century creations. The David Beckham/James Bond hybrid for Originals — the adiMEGA Torsion Flex CC — could do with getting its original sole back, but ...

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Hybrids generally aren't very good. There's some that are so subtly executed (the 87/90s circa 1991 a good example) that it proves effective but generally there's too much tinkering and the shoe loses its subtler hallmark details and the whole thing is a watered down mess. Saucony's latest Elite pieces with Boston's Bodega are actually very good. The gist of this trio is the G9 (Grid 9000) sole unit applied to classic Saucony silhouettes ...

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We love the adidas Originals revisit of the legendary Phantom model. In fact, we like it so much that a giant one took pride of place in last Sunday's 'Running Things' party via Chris Turner and Robert Brooks. It's easy to assume other brands have the monopoly on visible technology, but if you know your plugs, disc inserts and APS technologies, you know the brand with the 3-stripes was way ahead of the curve. The Phantom's (which ...

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The Jordan boxset has long been a source of controversy. Back in late 2005 we got pretty excited about the Defining Moments Pack for delivering a VI and IX at a point when the shoes included weren’t being retroed (emphasis seemed to be on IVs around that time and XIIIs like the infamous Altitude Green release). The executions of a 1991 and 1996 classic played it safe by only adding a discreet gold accent colour to existing makeups, so ...

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Every now and again, PRO-Keds calls in the NYC collaborative favours to remind that they were the original object of desire in that city. We Brits never saw that hype, so the brand's always got some catching up to do over here in terms of telling the story of why we should pick up their output over say, Converse or Vans. But PRO-Keds was a basketball-centric wing of KEDS and for many shoe gurus from the five boroughs, this ...

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The New Balance 1500 is a shoe that we love at Crooked Tongues. After all, we've reworked it 4 times. This late 1988 release has all the necessary credentials — love from the UK, love from the shoplifting breed of NYC cool kids on its original release and actual running wear before it got superseded. If you think the wild 2012 prices of Jordan boxsets are crazy, consider the $130+ tags on shoes like this 23 years ago. New Balance ...

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Yesterday we held a little "do" as part of adidas's #adidasunderground season. Despite a ton of activity in the area and folks keen to watch the underwhelming Olympic closing ceremony, plenty of our friends and those hunting complementary "refreshments" passed through. With the BBQ put on ice this year we thought we'd take up adidas's kind invitation to get involved (and we guessed the Stone Roses gig pretty early on) and thought we'd just pay tribute ...

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The New Balance 574 isn't a shoe we thought would ever gain much prestige. We always loved it, and knowing it's designed by a designer who created several other classics, it's got an amazing pedigree, even if it wasn't a "proper" runner like its more expensive siblings. Once upon a time, we used to wander into the office in pairs we'd gathered from saleracks, in a budget game of oneupmanship because TK Maxx had gems ...

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ASICS seem to be getting a their chunk of the current running shoe boom by giving the fans what they want. The ASICS Gel Saga line was never the kind of shoe we lost our minds over back in 1991 (it was far, far cheaper than a pair of Lytes or top tier Gel pieces), but it seems to have aged beautifully. Reliable, gimmick-free but carrying its own progressive identity that matches the currently popular New Balance 999 for looks ...

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These are not bad — not bad at all. We've had a history of obsessing over adidas boots and casual styles - from Frezeit to the GSG9 to the Super Trekking to the high Torsion Special to the super comfortable Darwen's mix of runner and moc-toe and everything in between, adidas have been putting out classics that merge genres. Admittedly the ZX 700 Boat wasn't our thing, and we got flamed for that opinion (especially when we seemed to ...

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The shoe consumer is marginally more complicated in 2012. The cynics have got him or her pinned as a hype addled goon, but with New Balance, technical runners, Jordans that even include onetime UK white elephants at retro level like the 12 and 14, it's a tough thing to call. We thought that applying the tricksiness of Hyperfuse to something as beloved as an Air Max (where even changes in shape have caused mild outcry) would go down like ...

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Nobody's taking the adidas ZX 8000's crown and it's a shoe that's defined by the iconic (an overused word, but relevant here) blend of aquatic blue and lemon yellow. This shoe had us hooked back in 1989 with the £85 pricetag and a sense that less was more via that Torsion Bar tunnel through the midsole, plus a squishy disk of polystyrene balls called the soft cell and we got into the groove. Why the 5000 ...

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IN STOCK: Click here to buy the adidas Consortium Church's (Tech Onix, Gum) in the Crooked Tongues store now. IN STOCK: Click here to buy the adidas Consortium Church's (Mustang Brown) in the Crooked Tongues store now. We know the adidas London pretty well, because we reworked it back in 2009. From that brief it was tough to shift from what made the shoe great - that plain heel, the City Series' cult status, rife with tales of slight ...

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The Nike Montreal Racer has been one of this year’s success stories at retro level. Somewhere in the brand’s 40th anniversary (and there’s evidently been a tactical decision to look forward and not make too much of an issue out of that milestone birthday), they’ve managed to put out a 1970s milestone and drop the FlyKnit collection — a set of shoes that’s putting contemporary design back in the spotlight. But you can see the lineage ...

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The Nike Air Max 97 is the shoe that became ubiquitous during those early British Blair years of optimism, was embraced by our European neighbours, then seemed to be pretty much dumped by the masses in favour of 87s and 120s. We love it, but we have to concede that, given the RRP, we’d generally opt for other Maxes over this one — it reeks of a certain era, when expensive denim was a novelty and we drenched ourselves in ...

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2013

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• January (28)

crooked tongues magazine News Features

Nike Sportswear Free Powerlines+ NRG 'Olympics'

Vans Vault Horween Leather Era LX

adidas Originals KZK Campus 80s "Snake"

Air Jordan VII Black/True Red/Dark Charcoal 2012 Retro

Nike Air Footscape Free 'Camo'

Converse Jack Purcell Camo

More Nike Sportswear Footscape Woven Chukkas

adidas David Beckham adiMEGA Torsion Flex CC

Saucony & Bodega Elite 'G9' collection

adidas Originals Phantom 'Pool Blue'

Air Jordan Golden Moments pack

PRO-Keds Royal Master Throwback Pack "Brooklyn"

New Balance M1500UC, 1500GSW & 1500VSW

Crooked Tongues #adidasunderground 'Running Things' video

New Balance M574 Backpack Pack

ASICS Gel Saga Black/White/Infrared

adidas Originals ZX TR Mid

Nike Air Max 90 Premium Hyperfuse Platinum/Dynamic Blue & Port Wine/Crimson

adidas ZX 8000 Black/White/Light Scarlet

adidas Consortium & Church's London

Nike Pre Montreal Racer Gym Red & Dynamic Blue

Nike Air Max 97 Hyperfuse "Dynamic Blue"

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