crooked tongues magazine News Features

Who's testing the classic Nike Cortez? The 1970's archives have been pillaged for reissues, but few — bar maybe the Waffle Racer, Bruin and Blazer — can test the Cortez for icon status that harks back to the brand's earliest days. As Nike's 40th commences, we've seen some reissues that take it back to the essence. We're seeing reissues of the 1971 Cortez with the heel tab and different sole unit and we're ever seeing ...

The adidas München is a shoe we love. Some terrace classics need some sub-cultural context to assist an appreciation and others are a territorial affair. But the München is a shoe with wider appeal, like the mighty Trimm Trab, with the lightweight sole unit and keep fit/training intent. The shoe that had a curious Suisse spinoff in the early 1980's debuted at the end of the 1970's as the evolution of the München design. We've long ...

Over the last few years, New Balance have been putting out plenty of product that never used to make these shores. We quietly lusted after the United Arrows 997.5 design from a few years back that applied the pink pop to the upper but switched the 997's clean midsole for the more elaborate ABZORB sole that was usually affixed to the 998. It was a low-key mix of 1991 and 1993, and nobody could even be bothered to ...

Kazuki Kuraishi is one of the reasons we still have faith in the collaboration. Humble but remarkably talented, he knows everybody who needs to be known in Tokyo and has carved out his own lane as the go-to man to get it done. Having worked with Burton, BAPE, NBHD and visvim, he became affiliated with adidas Originals around the time of theexcellent BAPE collaboration in 2003. That affiliation became something bigger in early 2009, when the first ObyO Kazuki releases ...

Having been exposed to a steady stream of heritage ASICS product, it's tough to lose our minds over the same silhouettes time and time again. But who would have thought that - after its mid '00s re-release to relative apathy from the masses but unbridled enthusiasm — the Gel Lyte III would go on to become a hype phenomenon? When we went and grabbed the retros off the racks for less than £30 all those years ago, we did it with ...

These shoes are a chunky-soled slab of Nike history. The brand is 40 years old this year, and the Frank Rudy assisted Air breakthrough was pivotal in establishing their market dominance. That's not to say that Nike were struggling in late 1978 when the Tailwind went on sale at Honolulu stores in time for their winter marathon — they had a whole brace of running favourites with racing and Waffle soles, but Air was a hidden weapon that promised a ...

You've got to go the extra mile these days to grab our attention when it comes to representing your brand. Especially last week, when things were kicking off in Paris and Berlin, with a mystery Nike announcement brewing in NYC for good measure. It was too much to take in. So much so, that we ended up becoming apathetic towards pretty much everything. But Vans pulled it out the bag with their OTW launch on Wednesday night. The last ...

No collaborations or anything fancy here. Just good basic make-ups. They can go a long way, as they evoke colourways of old and also pick up new age appreciators en route. Here we see inline colourways on the timeless beauty, the Nike Air Max 1, and it's something that can never really be faulted or be messed up. This iconic runner gets two new flavours, both pairs in tri-colour offerings with a white base in navy/red and black ...

And then there was X. We've never quite understood why only a handful of Jordans up the anticipation to fever pitch, whereas some maintain a more cultish appeal. Sure, we can understand why the general public aren't excited by the prospect of a Jordan XV, but the Jordan X is a thing of beauty. Clean, laden with sporting significance and leaving the fancy stuff to the outsole, where the big man's achievements were chalked up, it's ...

New Year, new year resolutions. Everyone wants to better themselves and no one can knock self-improvement. It's also a big year for our nation's sporting athletes as there's everything up for grabs, whatever field they're in. The Olympics are being held in our captial, the footballing season is far from over for all title contenders and various marathons are still yet to be run. To start 2012 in sporting fashion, Nike have handpicked a strong collective ...

1984 was a great year for sport. The Summer Olympics were held in Los Angeles where records were smashed and adidas' ZX 500 was born which was the perfect off-the-shelf shoe for high mileage running. Both stood the testament of time in sporting history, making significant marks, particularly with the Trefoil's technological running advances. An extended heel counter for cushioning and individually encased pressure absorbing nipple profile rubber studs helped anyone go the full distance. This time around, the ...

Tennis shoes used to be synonymous with understated elegance. Sporting authorities dictated branding and colour laws that meant that clay and grass court silhouettes stayed timeless due to their enforced simplicity. Then everything went crazy. As a result, contemporary designs have never quite grabbed our attention like they could have done, but that's not to say that we don't love technical tennis creations. The 1980's ushered in some of our favourite tennis shoes that broke that mould ...

Unlike his rival Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal favours a little more weight in his tennis shoe. Having been weaned on Agassi's Tech Challenge and the excellent Air Resistence alongside a whole brace of hard to damage Sampras shoes, the Court Ballistec range seems to be built on those foundations. Part 4.3 of the series isn't nearly as heavy as prior chapters, and the looks are a little sleeker. The Drag-On forefoot overlays are nothing to do with ...

We keep getting led back to the Nike Air Max 90, even though we're being assailed with great new Lunarlon and Free models this year, twinned with improved interactivity via the #makeitcount initiative. The shape may have changed and we might have been hit with almost as many AM90 makeups as the constant stream of Air Force 1 Lows, His and Mids of the past three years. But give us grey, black, white mesh and a pop colour, and ...

Late pass please. These have only just arrived at the office. Yeah, we forgot to include these late last year, and we just had to throw 'em up today just to remind ourselves how hard a collaboration can be when the partners understand the essence of the brand. Throw a shoe at a collaborator when they don't like the source material and it shows. Give TET and the W)TAPS team a Vans and they have a tendency to ...

Vans Syndicate doesn't play around when it comes to their releases. This is a top tier project that doesn't bow to release pressures either — sometimes a few pairs turn up and sometimes they hold off. That's a rare thing in an era (no pun intended) where most lines are just rolling out shoes for the sake of it. There's only one underlying theme with each Syndicate drop, and that's a certain authenticity in the choice ...

We've seen mixed responses to Nike's latest chapter of the Kobe saga, but we're feeling the Kobe VII. That wasn't the case when we first set eyes on the low cut version though — Kobe obviously found his comfort zone in terms of performance and aesthetics when he and Eric Avar lowered his shoe significantly between parts III and IV. Since the Kobe IV, we've seen variations on an accessible theme with the Kobe line. This ...

With it being an anniversary year for Nike, they had to resurrect some history from the archives. And it doesn't get more core Nike than the relationship between Bill Bowerman and Steve Prefontaine. The Pre Montreal design was originally a running spike for Steve, the rebel runner who was destined for greatness in the summer 1976 Olympics in Montreal, but had his life cut short by an accident in May 1975. An early ambassador for a fledgling Nike, Pre ...

This is some more grown man footwear from Nike Sportswear. Throwing zips at an old classic isn't necessarily the route to good shoes — in fact, in the case of those Blazer Mid things with the rubber toe, it was an insta-fail, with the busy nature of the design drowning out the good points. But these fragment Magmas are something far better. This makeup is part of a duo that includes a navy variation, but since last year's Steven ...

We don't give Nike Air Max 97s their due on this site. Sure, they're a big seller elsewhere and in every buy-in, because they're big in Italy, where shiny shoes with sleek looks get the most love, but they're a hard sell for us compared to their visible aired predecessors and it's a damned shame. That wasn't always the case though — the 97 was once the shoe to be seen in. The Air Max ...

These shoes were all meant to drop in the store tomorrow, but a couple of production issues with the Bodega version means only 3 are on sale and the Bodega version's been delayed until April. New Balance has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the popularity of its UK-made 577s and 1500s or US-made 998s, but the interest in CM999, MT580 and CM997 SMUs beyond the hardcore but devoted audience of a few years back has opened up the archives ...

No sooner has the year begun than Nike dropped some bombs to set off 2012. Uniting Nike Sportswear, Nike Basketball and Jordan Brand, the Chinese New Year collection for the Year of the Dragon is on a significantly grander scale than anything we've seen before. Naturally the Air Force 1 Low Supreme (available solo or as part of a package with a Destroyer jacket that we're assuming will arrive in an elaborate box is the star of the ...

It was only a matter of time before this shoe appeared inline. The Nike Sportswear resurrection of the Air Flow (and, as remakes go, the Lunar Flow is better than most too) was last summer's retro highlight. The shoe that nobody seemed to care about, bar some geniuses frequenting forums, proved that it was way ahead of its time on release in 1989 by coming back 22 years later and inciting queues. Queues for a forgotten masterpiece from the ...

New year, same shoes. You know how it goes. How many times have we written about the Air Max 90 on here? More times than we'd care to mention, but there's something about this shoe that's unsurpassed, and its popularity is hardly a mystery. Thankfully, the Olympics and Nike's 40th anniversary have meant several new silhouettes and fresh reintroductions are on the horizon, but the AM90 remains a constant. This colourway of the Nike Sportswear standard ...

The Nike Free Run+ 2 might be the best overall shoe of 2011. It's a great casual runner (though you'd have to be a psychopath to take on a marathon in Free), it was given Tier Zero makeovers in a smart bid to catch the cool kids taking up running but crucially, to look at people's feet in London, Tokyo and New York and see a brand new shoe on their feet after years of vulc, brogues ...

We've covered LeBron releases on here many, many times over the last 12 months, but the shapeshifting nature of the shoe (we count five different incarnations, not counting colourways, on the shelves since last New Year) means there's always plenty to discuss. Right now the LeBron 9 is still causing a fever, whether its the Christmas Day editions actually getting an NBA outing, despite 2011's lockout making that look unlikely, or the Watch The Throne editions keeping ...

Happy New Year. Fittingly, we're profiling a shoe that saw in 2011, and the Pointer Pluckrose ran neck and neck with the Air Force 1 Duck Boot as our favourite spin on LL Bean design of the year, but the lightweight warm weather shower theme put it in the lead. Pointer's really come of age with the Portugal-made product, but the Pluckrose's chukka-style cut, startlingly lightweight feel and beautiful build, plus scope for some sublime dual colour ...