crooked tongues magazine News Features

The whole adidas Consortium 'Your Story' project is pretty grand — we get lost if we see more than two colourways these days, but there's plenty of choice. One of the highlights of the first drop is Quote's take on the adidas ZX 500. You'd have to be odd to not have even the slightest affinity for this 1984 distance running masterpiece (which to our knowledge was designed by the man behind the adidas Forum — that's a career overachievement in only a couple of shoes) and when it's reworked by a real fan after dropping in a restored shape that brings it closer to the ZX 500's original shape, you can't go too wrong, can you? The whole 'Your Story' Consortium pack handpicks an array of less obvious global partners to give the line a more subtle Olympic theme that counteracts the overkill we're seeing surrounding the games. If you're a fanboy or fangirl, you know what your platonic ideal of a sneaker makeup would be — you've sketched it down psychologically multiple times - and Quote, a German trainer (when we're talking adidas, the term "sneaker" seems vulgar) connoisseur who knows his 3 stripes brings his vision of ZX 500 perfection to the table. Give a shoe like this to some bozo with no appreciation of it (and European fans generally understand this shoe better than the Americans do) and it's doomed to dayglo failure.

This model should be kept subtle and that's what Quote brings to it — after all, with its original drop date being the year of the Los Angeles Olympics that adidas really made its own, this shoe is relevant from the get-go with no gimmicks needed. Apparently Quote used the Olympiastadion as inspiration, but there's so much classic adi in here that we reckon he had it in his mind before that stadium entered the equation — what we really, really appreciate here is the flip of the two types of mesh from the OG, taking the upper's glossier mesh and making it the toebox and bringing the open weave to the upper. You see, it's the little things that matter, like the blue in the midsole's dual density elements and the way the Olympic ring colours are confined to those nippled panels on the rear of the outsole. All the materials are premium throughout too. That grey is hugely effective too...then there's the Ghilly lacing and heel counter...the whole thing reeks of a shoe obsession. Seriously, Quote has proved that handing the project to a person who's one of "us" is better than any number of usual collaborative suspects. Props are due to the man behind the makeup and the Consortium crew's tongue eyelet branding is a class act too. These arrive in the Crooked Tongues store very soon alongside the other 'Your Story' pieces. We still can't get enough of a well-executed ZX and it seems like the minds behind this project can't either. It's still a textbook example of a running shoe shape that's worthy of top tier celebration season after season after season...