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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 marveled at how adidas designs seemed to get a redux to keep up with new technologies and work with existing sole units, and the 1972 München was a very different looking training design, but the blue and white suede and leather makeup was a killer. What it became later down the line was a higher, chunkier creation that still maintained some sleekness in that toe. We made a Gucci-inspired edition a few years ago, and also had Markus Thaler remake the shoe for us as a 'VIP' shoe for the Oktoberfest Crooked BBQ that never was, and we always pondered the implications of a German-made variation.

adidas Originals' new approach to Consortium is to merge quality construction and reverence for the silhouettes with some storytelling - that doesn't mean we'll see more poker themed ZXs, but it means that there's more to the shoes than just pretty colours (or in the case of the first collection, barely any colours at all) — it's all very carefully orchestrated, but it's more than just retailer x brand x that season's silhouette. After the blank slate season opener, we get a German-made adidas München, and it's a thing of beauty. European-build is at the heart and soul of the adi archives, with the Yugoslavian, West Germany and French-made trainers setting the standards for all that followed, but Far Eastern creations have dominated the shelves of late. We can't remember the last German-made adidas Originals release. We recall a beautiful ZX edition in the aZX collection for competition winners, built in a workshop and a Reinhold Messner Super Trekking reissue that was made there, but very little else, and if you're going to pay proper homage to a shoe, you need to make like the US-made New Balance 1300 for the Japanese market and go all out, which is what the Consortium team have done here. Baffling the Herzo factory team, who seem to be busier making football boots than 30+ year old training shoes, these go back to the roots in suede, leather and nylon mesh, with a handmade feel that no amount of pseudo-yellowing.

It's the little things that matter, and even the packaging is a replica of the München box, down to the fonts on the sticker. From our crude knowledge of shoe economics — and in a world where a pleather basketball shoe can fly out at £110 in vast numbers — we don't think this is a vast profit making exercise, but rather a response to the fanatics. We first caught a glimpse of these in the excellent ads that prefaced the subtly adidas Originals sponsored 'The End' compilation (which you need in your life), which felt like a pleasantly old fashioned way to launch a shoe in a jpeg and Vimeo-led world. The only thing quainter would have been having to go on a waiting list at Wade Smith. One thing that's not so quaint is the price tag — an unconstrained approach to 1:1 reproduction means they're set to retail at £200 when the Made in Germany München finally arrives in very limited quantities next month in the Crooked Tongues store.

We're assuming there'll be some soul searching and justifications (1 great pair of shoes for the price of 2 crappier pairs?) on the build up to release, but we appreciate the labour of love treatment. After this, we're promised some projects of an equal caliber, but nobody's given us any more to work on, other than a guarantee that we'll be excited nearer the time. European made terrace classics is an interesting development — slow footwear to counteract the fast food fodder that hogs the limelight.