crooked tongues magazine News Features

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 ACG model that benefited from some attractive use of accent colour. Now there's the Nike Vengeance SD. What does SD stand for? Is it a Superdry collaboration on the low? Stripped down? Subtly different? Or is it just shorthand for suede? We're assuming the latter, because this carries a lot of that tactile material on the upper. There's even a bit of quasi-formal dress shoe detailing with the stitched sole at the rear being a key point-of-difference here, alongside the heavily ventilated tongue, heeltab and that dual midsole density.

The shape's the same, but the trademark "wonky" bottom lace is a goner, replaced by Scotchlite and a correlating cluster of Scotchlite reflectivity on the heel that may or may not be a nod to the equally important Air Epic's rear. Somehow, despite ditching the iconic colour block on the lateral forefoot in favour of something a little more conventional and, providing you know your V shoes, it's still recognisably Vengeance at the core. That's a testament to just how good shoe design was in 1984. As far as we can remember, this is the model that pre-empted the Vector and Vortex by a season or two, built for speed and high-speed training and fully established before it became part of the V-Series campaign. That black and Infrared-style shade, AM95/Lunar-esque grey and neon, and burgundy and mustardy yellow are all appealing, with this trio of makeups that drops next month. We don't fully understand why these exist, but we'll just go with the flow and accept it as a solid accompaniment to the NSW Solstice's Internationalist remix.