crooked tongues magazine News Features

The White/Fire Red Air Jordan IV is the kind of shoe that attracts a younger clientele as it gets older — not in a seedy way though. For a generation, this was the first Air Jordan that was easily accessible in the UK and worn by both Sir Cliff Richard and Ice-T. Having to venture to south London and pay a markup for the IIIs or get our AJ1s though a Kay's catalogue meant missions, but these were in ...

The shoe world is trying to bankrupt you. It's flinging decent retros, woven modern classics and cashing in on that wave of Olympic goodwill that's splashing around you at the moment. There's always that part of us that curses the Dream Team for being so presumptious, as Americans declare that they're unstoppable, but if you saw KD and LeBron perform on Sunday, you'll concede that the chemistry is there this summer. Not only have we ...

Every year we try to put on at least one event (bar 2008, where circumstances left us without an event) and this year's Crooked Tongues party is happening a little earlier. There's no BBQ this time around, but on the 12th of August (closing ceremony day) from 5pm until midnight, we're hosting a "do" with our friends at adidas Originals as part of the #adidasunderground project that coincides with some little sporting get together called the Olympic ...

We've bored you with tales of our Nike Air Safari love here before and you don't want to hear that all over again, do you? There's two things about the shoe that we're particularly keen on — the bizarre OG colourway that you can see from several hundred metres away and that soft foam midsole that makes them look and feel like luxury Windrunners (which was kind of the intent of the shoe). Take those elements away ...

Typical. You wait a few years for running shoes that don't look like tricked-out vomit for the feet, then a ton of good designs arrive at once. The adidas adiZero Primeknit's a fine design, but comparisons between this and another high profile release are perfectly understandable, because the industry seems to have a case of the knits at the moment. We do like a good technology scuffle between brands — after all, we were raised in the days of ...

IN STOCK: Click here to buy the adidas Superstar 80s (Craft Gold) in the Crooked Tongues store now. IN STOCK: Click here to buy the adidas Superstar 80s (Clear Grey) in the Crooked Tongues store now. adidas Superstars are here for good. It doesn't matter whether you overdosed on them in 2005 during the vast Superstar35 rollout — this shoe cannot be beaten in the design stakes. Nowadays we're so familiar with the shelltoe that we take for granted ...

The whole Nike FlyKnit launch is the shoe highlight of 2012. It might seem a little presumptuous to make that statement just over halfway into the year, but unless something insane drops between now and New Year’s Eve, we’re quietly confident that it will remain top dog. This is proof that sustainable shoes don’t have to look like they’re made from bark and saliva, as the shoe’s construction is a no-waste proposition, but crucially, they ...

The adidas ZX 700 can get a little overlooked in favour of the 500, 600 and 800. Even looking at old catalogues, the 700 never seemed to circulate like its predecessors and sequel did, but it’s a beautiful piece of running shoe design. Some serious thought went into this 1985 creation, with a focus on overpronation and oversupination and plenty of biomechanical thinking in the design. The “wave profile” for support and traction is a mysterious addition that just ...

The reason Crooked is here is because of British trainer culture — obsessing over Dallas, Marathon TRs and Wimbledons. That's beyond dispute, but sometimes out Yankophile tendencies get the better of us. New York never created sports footwear culture — two worlds ran parallel to some degree, but never seemed to cross over, despite some occasional common ground. Casual culture remains fascinating and frequently misrepresented, but its importance in altering how we as a nation dressed is immense. The actions of ...

Nike Air Force 1s and the UK have a decent relationship, but they can be a tough sell in 2012 beyond the hordes of kids who wear JD's white on whites and blacks. It just isn't a particularly UK-centric silhouette. It's a shoe that needs a reboot at trend level. That doesn't mean that we're co-signing the super slim version either — even in monotone that thing is all shades of wrong. We knew the Olympics ...

IN STOCK: Click here to buy the adidas Consortium Zx500 (Tech Chrome, Lead, Collegiate Red) in the CT store now. The adidas ZX 500 is an artful design that pretty much changed our perception of running shoes. We've never fully analysed the impact it had in the States (but from Q&As we conducted for the aZX collection in late 2007, we got the impression that Euro partners were more into the ZX series). This model's been made ...

Nike are going in with their Air Force 1 offerings for the shoe's 30th anniversary and with it being the Dream Team's 20th anniversary this year too to coincide with some kind of McDonald's sponsored sports tournament this summer, it's a good time to break out Nike Basketball's classic colourway too. After that ruling was lifted to allow for the greatest collection of NBA stars ever amassed, the Dream Team managed to infiltrate popular culture ...

We're late on these, but since every Nike Air Flow has been a killer, from that Selfridges exclusive (burgled from the Crooked Tongues office), the TZ drop of OG colours that flew out to the inline colourways that comprised of one OG (which as we recall, was the colourway seen on the crack buyer's feet at the end of 'Boyz n the Hood') and a general release for the black pair. All have been excellent thus far. As ...

IN STOCK: Click here to buy the adidas Phantom (Ice Grey, White) in the Crooked Tongues store now. It's a tough life for anybody wanting to develop and otaku-like adidas knowledge. Different regions, licensees and rogue factories, plus the brand's determination to keep upgrading core styles in line with developments on the production line can make life tough. Then there's name similarities between categories, like this, the original Phantom and a well-regarded adidas basketball shoe of the ...

The rollout of the Nike Sportswear Hyperfuse releases last summer managed to win over some of the purists with the takes on original colours. We expected a little more resistance, but the feedback seemed super positive for both the 90 Infrared AM90 editions and the 87 Blue AM87 OG reduxes, but people seemed to be into them. Maybe shoes like the first Air Max have been altered so much over the years in terms of shape and detailing that anything ...

The Nike Air Force 1 has been made into something more hardcore a few time before — there's been no end of wheat workboot variants that riff on the parallels between white-on-white Uptowns and brand new Timbs, with their one-wear-and-they're-ruined feel that necessitates constant restocks. After that there was a Baltoro hybrid variant (kind of underrated) and the LL Bean style duck versions. So we're not surprised to see these 'Military' variants, and after a more limited release ...

Judging by their second duo of Saucony colourways, New Jersey's Packer have a decent knowledge of what the people seem to want at the moment. It might just have been a convenient alliteration of Trail and Tech that links both packs thus far, but we think these Tech offerings surpass the Trail colourways. At the end of the day there's zero point trying to make a Saucony GRID 9000 look like a brogue or anything remotely quaint — it ...

TheNike Lava Dome is a thing of beauty. Don't agree? You're on the wrong website The Steven Alan editions even managed to give the shoe a curious elegance that evoked older variations, but we think everybody's on the same page when it comes to this shoe — a hardwearing suede and that seemingly invincible canvas mesh is all you need. Inspired by John Roskelley and company's LDV wearing at base camp on K2, plus a preoccupation with ...

Vans really went all out on the promo packaging for the Vans LXVI collection, though we're guessing that won't be how the retail editions are housed. We're obsessed with Vans' core silhouettes, the Vault line and how Syndicate is pretty much the definitive delivery of top tier product, but we appreciate that a brand needs to evolve and those wide dad BBQ shoes aren't necessarily the alternative, plus a love of vulc could switch to a ...

We haven't been this taken by a Nike running design since we saw the Flyknit offerings and GYAKUSOU Elites. That might have only been a few months back, but you can't deny that Nike Running have upped the ante this year and created modern classics. Everywhere we've been lately, we've seen Nike Free on feet and a scattering of primary coloured Lunarlon and it's clear that a current preoccupation with technology from Johnny-come-lately types who ...

This summer, basketball's a big deal — especially on these shores when Team USA arrive. We've already had the World Basketball Festival pass through at the weekend and we're getting nostalgic for 1992 all over again, back when British sports chains were heaving with NBA mini basketball backboards and Champion replica vests were all over Cobra and Olympus sports. That's also one of our favourite years for shoes — Flight Huaraches, Mutumbos, Flight 180 Lows and Raids rocked ...

The Air More Uptempo belongs to a strange time for Nike, operating in the middle of a time when there seemed to be an internal struggle to strip down the conventional branding on Nike shoes. Think about 1992's Huarache Flight or 1997's Foamposite One — those shoes let strange do the chatter. They were arrogant enough that they assumed nobody would associate that level of innovation with anything else. The More Uptempo was something very different though — If you ...

TheConverse All Star is a global shoe that had 'em all coming back for replacements; from gangbangers to grebos. We're not especially trusting of anybody who hasn't got at least a couple of pairs in the cupboard, just because it's pretty much flawless. There is one slight problem though — a conventional Chuck isn't the most comfortable shoe on certain foot shapes, so when the Converse Skateboarding initiative was resurrected after a few false starts, we were ...

You wouldn't go too far to watch most of the UK acts who make recurring appearances at the MOBOs, would you? We reckon that the fact they generally dress like an explosion in TK Maxx and All Saints doesn't help. Tinie Tempah's a little more careful about his attire though. We don't trust people in bow ties for the most part, but his other sartorial picks give Mr Tempah the edge over his distressed denim contemporaries ...