crooked tongues magazine News Features

Reebok might have closed their performance basketball division for the time being (we're still waiting to see that they're going to announce on that front), but their decision to break out the early to mid 90s designs is a welcome one. We've bumped into some of the minds behind the shoes of this time (when the brand went up against Nike with Shaq, Shawn and Allen), but as we understand, many of the shoes we've loved ...

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Remember 2006, when we all wore zip up hooded sweatshirts festooned with guns, and Nike dropped a ton of Air Max hybrids? Yeah, we're not that nostalgic about that moment in time either. But that doesn't mean we don't mess with hybrids sometimes - remember when the Nike Air Max 90, Talaria and Humara had a baby? That was a sleeper shoe that really worked. And dipping through the Nike archives, we've seen prototype Air Max BWs ...

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When Nike's got a platform to play with, you better believe that they're going to make the most of it. After all, even when you're a zillion dollar sport brand, every cent counts and they, along with every other brand, have been doing it for decades. Every flagship arrived with a scaled down but similar shoe for a more cash strapped audience. Now, with the gulf between casual wear and performance being significantly less spacious, the remixes ...

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When we first saw the Nike Flyknit Lunar1+ we got a little too hyped and put them up without knowing the full story behind them. We're not sorry though, because this is a tremendous distillation of all we loved about Flyknit last year on a more accessible platform. Lunarlon and this newer technology had previously only been seen at Nike HTM level in scarce quantities (normally we assume limited means a zillion, but when those things were gone, they ...

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The adidas Americana is a very important shoe indeed. A while back, while upping store shoes on our Instagram, somebody labeled the Basket Profi, a Nike Blazer copy. At first we thought that was a little rich, because while the reintroduction of the Profi probably was a response to the Blazer's ubiquity, the Blazer was (according to an unnamed source who was there at the time) an attempt to imitate the Americana. Look at the silhouettes of both shoes ...

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There's more to New Balance than grey suede and mesh (not that there's anything wrong with that) and there comes a time when you have to break out the loop of sensible running shoes. NB has the heritage runner side of things on lock and while the rainbow makeover on their latest iteration of the flagship M890 neutral runner series will cause some hatred for its rainbow colours (again, not that there's anything wrong with that), we ...

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We like the Nike Free Powerline II more than last year's Free Powerline. When the first version of this shoe debuted, with its Free meets Humara styling, we assumed it was just another takedown of performance running for profiling and posing in via a spot of late 1990s trail tech in the mix that seemed to be very much on trend, but enough to bring some old Nike fanboys out of retirement. The Powerline II has a redesigned upper ...

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All Star Weekend has gone from a place where key players got a fairly hard-to-obtain Nike footwear upgrade to a marketeer and designer's wet dream. Nike Basketball are dropping gems at performance level (the spaceage theme, where key players got their own planets really works on the NSP-KB24 Kobe 8 System) with some good creative work from Eugene Rogers and Erick Goto, as the intergalactic concept reflects the event's Houston location this year, but what about the Sportswear ...

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The Hanon Shop adidas Consortium Centaur (or CNTR as we have to call it now) is just the start of a collection of new colours for that 1984 running classic. If the monotone nature of these Consortium editions of the shoe fill you with panic, you can console yourself in the knowledge that the original makeups are pretty much a certainty and that adidas Originals does retros better than most. For us, the rerelease of the Centaur fills us with ...

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It's always good to see a collaboration that makes some sense and adidas Consortium's rerelease of the adidas Centaur is a welcome one. Dropping alongside some other Consortium makeups of this terrace favorite, Aberdeen's Hanon Shop continue a winning streak of simplicity on models with a strong local following to follow-up their 2010 Kegler Super makeover. We're assuming that the change from Centaur to CNTR was down to legal issues (age-old trademarks are no fun), and ...

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adidas Originals have so many classic running shoe silhouettes in the archives that it's difficult to fathom, but few have the power of the ZX line. Having said that, there's at least another six ZX designs deserving of a reissue, but while aid is trawling the archives and bringing back the Phantom and Centaur (which comes back courtesy of Consortium and Hanon Shop next month), they're still doing good things with models like the ZX 700, which ...

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This is a perfect shoe. We know people might note the contradiction between our love of this shoe and our hatred of pre-aged details, but here's the thing — it looks great and having seen a vintage UK-made pair at New Balance's Flimby HQ, that heel counter has taken on a similarly curious hue. If you've been into New Balance for more than 5 years, you'll remember these dropping for the 20th anniversary of the M576 back ...

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Japan's mita sneakers know shoes and their work shows no single characteristic trait beyond being consistently interesting. If you mess with the NB MT580, you can thank mita for popularising that trail silhouette, but their work with adidas Originals keeps it simple. Last year, their Campus 80s remixes were ultra simple (some might say they were unimaginative), with a familiar burgundy and white combo and a black and red variation, both with the dreaded pre-vintage treatment on the midsole ...

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How many remakes of the Nike Air Max 1 in its original form can we take? Quite a few as it happens, because, despite the influx of Nike Air Max 87s we've seen over the last few years, there's no substitute for the model's OG colours — white, neutral grey and red. You wait a minute for new reissues, then a trio arrives. We can explain away a retro of the shoe that started it all but the ...

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More Nike Air Epics? We're not complaining. This 1985 classic seemed to capture that big money hustler market that made it aspirational, get plenty of love from those who actually ran in a pair back in the day and make a little headway into the terrace market who let a few swooshed shoes in among the stripes. For that reason, it's an important release. Beyond the nostalgia, the Scotchlite underlay with the ventilation, the sole details and shape ...

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These should be terrible, but they're actually not bad at all. Sorry to surf into this News entry on a wave of faint praise, but the Nike Vengeance is a pretty sacred shoe to us. That hasn't stopped Nike putting out some alright remixes of this pioneering runner — there was the Lunar Racer Vengeance as part of the V-Series redux that updated the original's intent using new innovations pretty effectively and there was that out-of-nowhere Terra Vengeance ...

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We think 2013 is the year when some key elements of shoe retail undergo some significant changes. Niketalk is rife with talk of restock on certain products and adidas products sold from Europe can't be sold outside of the European Union. Things done changed. If rules change, the product needs to be up to par, right? Fortunately, adidas is embracing the 1990s pieces that don't bear a problematic EQT logo and doing a damned good job of retroing ...

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We'd like to get as nostalgic as the next person, but we just can't get sentimental for the Nike Air Pressure. We want to —we love Audio Two's second album and we loved the Command Force's appearance in 'White Men Can't Jump' but they were't the best shoes back then. And 1991's Air Force 180 Hi was just an awkward looking shoe because of that ugly, bulbous pump collar detailing. So, despite vitriolic ...

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Yep, we're the online equivalent of those people that keep on saying "Happy New Year" way beyond the 1st of January. But some of our Best of 2012 Q&As took a little longer to return than others and we couldn't omit the Nike Flyknit project as a whole — the Racer, Trainer and HTM releases had to get a mention here. We don't care what your brand or shoe allegiance is - you had to appreciate the Flyknit ...

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The Nike Air Force 1 might not be the cause of as much hype as it used to be on a day-to-day basis, but when we see a killer makeup, don't call it a comeback. This model is still a Nike bestseller in monotone shades. The Energy releases, like the Lunar Force 1 remix and the excellent Supreme trio have been the most prominent Uptowns lately, but there's some low key triumphs inline too. As this model enters ...

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New Balance has been a brand we've been passionate about for a long, long time, but we really didn't ever think the MT580 would be a serious currency in 2013. With preview shots of this shoe bruising Instagram, we thought it was worth taking a closer look at this SMU. We spotted this in the order book as a collaboration late last year and couldn't work out the FXX in MT580FXX stood for. It transpires that it ...

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Nike, we love a lot of your new designs, but you don't need to keep shouting that they're AIR MAX!!!!!!!!!!!!! at us all of the time. You didn't need to do that in 1987 and you don't need to do it with the 2013 releases either. Beyond the unnecessary branded bellowing at the heel, we're into the Nike Air Max Cage. Our support for the resurrection of the Nike Tennis line as superior summertime wear ...

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The Nike Humara is a Crooked Tongues favourite that even managed to win over the most non-Nike characters in the building through some of the best Nike design ever (we believe that it's another classic from the genius that is Peter Fogg) and redefined trail running in 1997 and left us completely baffled as to what was ACG and what wasn't. if you know your shoes, you know that the distinctive nylon straps on the upper of the ...

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Feeling more like a best of Nike's oddest moments than anything particularly new, we can't deny the love we feel for the Nike Footscape Woven Chukka. The animal prints that were Asia-exclusives and the HTM-tribute rainbow takes, plus the Bodega edition were all triumphs. Why does this shoe work? We like that Mowabb-esque neoprene collar and the way the extra inch or so of ankle height makes the addition of that Free-style grooved update of the Footscape sole ...

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The Nike Pre Montreal was one of 2012's smartest Nike remixes. Sublime in its execution, the racer-soled redesign of the Prefontaine and Bowerman Pre Spike design that addressed the issue of discomfort from pesky seams in the forefoot by giving it a one-piece toe that presumably appealed to Bill's hatred of excess grams by making it more minimal too. Some updates fall flat, but the reverence this redesign showed admirable restraint, to make it the best Nike shoe ...

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The knit-on-a-shoe 2012 movement had its most traditional moment with the Converse and Missoni project. Debuting on the catwalk, retailing in super limited numbers at Colette in a variety of archive Missoni patterns, then finally reaching select store shelves globally in this copper threaded makeup, the Auckland Racer was a more offbeat chapter in the ongoing Missoni and Converse partnership. We won't pretend we ever had much interest in this running silhouette until it had a one-piece welded look ...

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It's 2013 and that sounds like a particularly futuristic moment in time. The problem is, people are more interested in willfully yellowed reproductions of past triumphs than progressive product, but it's good to see that the Nike LunarEclipse+ 3 looks like a shoe from 2013 should do. We were besotted with the original LunarEclipse when it dropped as a performance running flagship and we liked the sequel that brought the Dynamic Fit (that the Zoom Vapor 9 Tour ...

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2012 was a year when knitted shoes were a big draw and Patrick Ewing shoes were a big winter story. You couldn't have foreseen that happening. We lost our minds over the Consortium versions of the adidas Rivalry Lo, complete with their smart inter-team rivalry colourway concept and commitment to quality. We also need the NYC-only snakeskin editions in our lives right now too, but that's a begging letter for another day. Those who understand how the low-priced ...

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2013

• May (17)
• April (24)
• March (26)
• February (27)
• January (28)

crooked tongues magazine News Features

Reebok Kamikaze II Mid "Reign Man"

Nike Air Max 1 2013 QS

Nike Chenchukka+ Quickstrike

Nike Flyknit Lunar1+

adidas Americana Hi 88

New Balance M890RB3

Nike Free Powerlines+ II "Diffused Taupe"

Nike Sportswear All-Star Weekend Area 72 collection

adidas Consortium CNTR makeups

adidas Consortium & Hanon Shop CNTR

adidas Originals ZX 700 Dark Petrol & Bliss

New Balance M576NGA 25th Anniversary editions

adidas Originals x mita sneakers Japan pack

Nike Air Max 1, OG, Women's Vintage & Engineered Mesh

Nike Air Epic February 2013 releases

Nike Vengeance SD

adidas Tech Super February releases

Nike Air Force Mid 180 White/Hyper Red

CT Best of 2012: Nike Flyknit Q&A

Nike Air Force 1 White/Gorge Green/Orange

New Balance & Fingercroxx MT580FXX

Nike Air Max Cage

Nike Newmara

Nike Footscape Woven Chukka Knit 'Flat Gold' & 'Night Stadium'

Nike Sportswear Pre Montreal Racer January 2013 colourways

CT Best of 2012: Converse & Missoni Auckland Racer Q&A

Nike LunarEclipse+ 3

CT Best of 2012: adidas Consortium Rivalry Q&A

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