crooked tongues magazine News Features

On the ACG front, this season's Okwahn sequel was the clear winner, but these upgrades take it back to a time long before All Conditions Gear. Back in 1981, when Nike ran the John Roskelley campaign with the Lava Dome, Approach and Magma, the whole offroad shoe concept was in its infancy. While the Lava Dome's been homaged multiple times (and it gets a 2012 variation too), even spawning a son (who really, really, really should be retroed ...

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The Nike Free Trail was an underrated entry into the Nike Free collection on its debut. In our eyes, this might be the best Nike Free shoe ever made too — it's a silhouette that continues the strong work the Nike Air Terra collection did but retains its own identity too. There was a point in the early days of Free when there was 3.0s, 4.0s, 7.0s and women's fitness and standard running designs with that ...

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Looking for a Nike Air Max on steroids? Actually, that was the Air Muscle Max and Air Mad Max but these are a leaner, more brutal version of a classic. This was the year when the Air Max 90 in its traditional form seemed to crumble beneath the popularity of the Air Max 1. The one real success story from this 22 year old icon? Hyperfuse. Obviously the Infrared (and they should have done it for Coral Roses and the ...

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When a good new performance shoe comes along we're going to go out of our way to plug it. And when it's a brand-new tennis shoe (and you really need to read Air Rev's top 50 tennis shoes on Complex from last week, where he rates this model highly) after years of hunting a modern classic for that sport and a brand-new Tinker Hatfield design too you know we're going to try to come up with ...

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Now the adidas Rivalry Lo is the kind of shoe we could talk about for hours. Athletics, brands and shoes are built on rivalries and the 1980s were a significant time for conflict fought on the courts and in boardrooms as the dawn of the big money sponsorship and the battle to win the aspirations of audiences situated beyond the hardwood truly took shape. The adidas Rivalry represents a perfect point in the middle of a maelstrom of promotion and ...

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This has been the year of Nike[/url ]AF1 nostalgia for us. Helping out on a Complex Air Force 1 top 50 reminded us that this is one of the most important shoes ever, whether you find they look like brothel creepers or not in terms of creating the collector market that we love and loathe in equal measures. It's been 30 years since the Uptown (which should also be known as the Baltimore, seeing as Charlie Rudo was ...

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The Nike Air Solstice is a curious shoe. It's not a bad shoe at all but it always makes us squint. We've been squinting at it since it first appeared as an NSW release a few months back. It's not unusual to see Nike making the most of some tooling or a last — every sportswear brand has been doing that since we were kids, but this one's always been different, because there was something about it ...

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The Nike Air Epic is easily one of the greatest running shoes of all time and the recent retro, like the one a few years back, has maintained that power. Sure, you knew you were going to get more colours (and we actually like the Lunarlon variant too) beyond the original colourway and while we still want to know if anybody out there likes the yellowed piss-spill vintage effect, this makeup's a banger. Once a no-expense spared top tier ...

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When we saw a Nike Air Force 1 DCN Military for the first time during the summer, it left us cold. Who the hell wanted an army boot when it was warm outside? Sure, it was wet, but a beefed up boot seemed a little gratuitous. But if you've seen us hurl plaudits at the Air Force 1 Duck Boot, you know we're not adverse to elements of that silhouette and while the Military doesn't execute its ...

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If somebody told us they didn't like the Nike Air Terra Humara, we'd be inclined to charge at them and start pummeling them in the head. Our love for the shoe is so deep that we take insults directed at it personally. We lusted after it from a distance, joined the waiting lists, saw the camo editions in 'Boon,' visited those Broadway spots in NYC with the ludicrous amount of colourways and scored pairs of the HTMs but ...

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X gon' give to ya. Well, it will do unless you're fully adverse to this series of spaceboots. As you may have gathered, we're fans. Just as we got the Nike LeBron X in the office to play with in two colourways, so excuse us if we're repeating ourselves. In USA colours (long sold out) we think it's one of the best LeBrons to date and while not everybody can appreciate the power of a shiny ...

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The Nike Challenge Court has been a welcome reintroduction for 2012. That height and material mix makes this pivotal John McEnroe shoe a genuine icon and with the success of the Blazer, we can see Nike eating the waters to see what else amasses mass appeal like that basketball classic. Having been launched in VNTG form and as a Lunarlon SB edition (which we would have loved to see Supreme rework) complete with John in the ads, trading Larry's ...

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Uh-oh. We were doomed to do the Marge Simpson murmur at the Nike Air Max Terra Sertig. We love the Terra Sertig — love it and that's part of our problem here. Maybe we're just too darn stuck in our ways, but sticking a 360 Max Air unit on it is a little awkward — like monster truck wheels on a Bentley. We love what the Sertig represents — that era when ACG stepped aside for a Terra-branded line of rugged ...

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What would Bowerman do? That's the query that every Nike designer is tasked with taking on with every design. What he would have made of the Choad is anyone's guess but what would be have do if the Roshe Run's minimalism had been dropped on his workshop table? We haven't managed to make ourselves like the versions of this shoe that trade mesh for leather, but these have something more to them, with the forefoot's ...

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The Nike Air Max 1 is the new king of the Nike retro rollout. Well, it's something that's been evident over the last couple of years, but the love for this shoe from an audience that weren't even born when visible air debuted is overwhelming. A while ago we pretty much lost interest at the constant stream of neutral coloured makeups, but this season, they seem to be back on form again. Nobody's reinventing the wheel ...

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Part 3 is good but the Nike Free Run+ 2 is the best of this series thus far. This shoe is pivotal in pushing performance running back to a casual crowd — it had been a minute since we'd had a shoe that was good for both running and posing and while the first Free Run (the LIVESTRONGS are still incredible) brought Free back after a post-2004 high and subsequent dip, seeing the aqua and oranges of the sequel everywhere ...

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Dylan Raasch's Nike Roshe Run design has been an interesting antidote to a year when the queue became a norm. This was the Pepto-Bismol to an industry indigestion, but we don't think Nike knew what they had on their hands, so the olives and blacks became a little scarce. We even marched into the Nike Employee Store assuming that they'd be plentiful, but the cupboards were bare beyond women's sizes. We're wearing the Roshe and ...

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Sequels and shoes are a tricky one. The Nike Air Max dynasty is a good example of an ongoing line that works (even though between 2003 and 2006 there wasn't too much memorable activity) and adidas did quiet tweaks to bestsellers to make them Super. Then there's the wild experimentation of the Jordan line at its peak. But there's also the Footscape II and Rift II — the 'Taken 2's of the shoe world. Like the follow-up ...

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Remember when only a handful of people in the know on these shores knew about the power of LeBron's signature line? Look at the fanbase now. We think a mix of solid design with global appeal and boredom with retro shoes drove people to Nike Basketball's premiere performance piece. Part 7 changed some opinions, part 8 made some power moves and by part 9, LeBron's franchise was cemented. We think that elusive championship win helped a little ...

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Reebok's Pump line has held up pretty well given the all-out gimmickry of the technology. Wacky valves or no valves, the shoe designs are excellent, with an individual look that was a nice evolution of Reebok's fitness pieces and BB range — in an era of biting styles, it's to Reebok's credit that they had their own identity. After "The Pump" (later renamed the Bringback) debuted with the same ugly heel bulk that sunk the Air Pressure ...

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The Kazuki connection always bears some significant fruits for adidas. Mr. Kuraishi puts his people on, whether it's Hong Kong's CLOT, BAPE, Neighborhood or the Whiz, CASH CA or Luker subdivisions or Tokyo florists. You'd assume Tokyo's tastemakers all hung about in some black-walled clubhouse scheming, but we're inclined to believe that it's more organic than that. When we saw adidas's The Soloist collection, we didn't realise that it tied with Takahiro ...

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Go and look at the boxes you've amassed. They're looking a little too samey, right? We've long been fans of special packaging, whether it was Pump's special boxes, OG 95s, NikeiD slide-out efforts, our NB Confederacy of Villainy, lots of Vans Vault pieces...even shoes we weren't feeling like the Air Pressure and PUMA Disc had their own special containers for a point of difference. Now you're likely to just see a sea of ...

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2013

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• May (24)
• April (24)
• March (26)
• February (27)
• January (28)

crooked tongues magazine News Features

Nike Magma 2012 & Approach 2012

Winter 2012 Nike Free Trail colourways

Nike Air Max 90 Hyperfuse Black/Grey

Nike Zoom Vapor 9 Tour "Agassi"

A brief history of the adidas Rivalry Lo

Nike Air Force 1 Low Grey/Volt & Grey/Infrared

More Nike Air Solstice makeups

Nike Air Epic Black/White/Green

Nike Air Force 1 DCN Military Olive & Black

Nike Air Max Humara

More Nike LeBron X talk

Nike Challenge Court Mid "Suede & Ripstop" pack

Nike Air Max Terra Sertig

Nike Roshe Run "Pre Montreal"

Nike Air Max 1 Gym Red/Anthracite & Granite/Deep Smoke

Nike Free Run+ 2 Green, Black & Anthracite

Nike Roshe Trail

Nike Okwahn II

Nike LeBron X

Reebok Pump Omni Lite HLS

adidas Originals & The Soloist collection

Reebok FitList Box

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