crooked tongues magazine News Features

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 ASICS trash talking Nike and Reebok vying for pump valve dominance. Nobody wants excessive technologies any more though and less became more. Nobody gave a toss about sustainability when they were making basketball shoes that seemed to be about three feet tall, but things done changed. The knitted running shoe seems to be the new frontier for a shoe rivalry. We don't know where the idea originated, but we know that both Nike and adidas seem to have had woven projects in the pipeline for 3 years of so and in January, Nike's first FlyKnit release made a marathon debut and subsequently went on to selectively sate the appetite of an audience desperate for a new design after being assailed by one retro after the next.

adidas' Primeknit project arrives on the eve of the adidas-sponsored London Olympics and the woven interpretation of the 3-Stripes and a one piece construction irons out any potential discomfort, while Sprintframe and that lightweight adiZero approach to build is tried and tested. We're still not 100% sure as to whether the waste-free creation process is really just one solitary thread throughout, but it's clear that a time's coming when this will be the norm. As printing technology advances and we develop a greater understanding of exactly what matters when it comes to a running shoe, but with an emphasis on stability and speed, the Primeknit delivers and the UK-centric colours for this UK-exclusive are a classic combination. The fact that these are made in Germany is another interesting element of the shoes' development, but their limited run of 2,012 pairs seems fairly manageable as far as production runs go. We'd certainly like to see the manufacturing process for a pair (any chance of a video?) with a pop up shop opening at 10 Newburgh Street until the end of the Olympics, they drop tomorrow, setting off a fortnight of sports and a weekend of woven shoe drops. Who would have thought knitwear would end up being a hot weather trend?