Crooked Tongues Latest News

Nike Sportswear Foamposite One "Supernova"

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:07:03 +0000

People have been calling the Nike Foamposite One a moonboot since it debuted in 1997. When we first clocked a pair of Penny's shoes in a late 1990's issue of 'The Source' complete with the 1-800-432-3061 number, we assumed these had dropped from space. They were just there. In their purest One form, they even ditched a hefty swoosh in favour of a tiny white spot of forefoot branding. What was Nike smoking? In the flesh, if you tapped up central London stockists shifting them at a hefty pricepoint, they looked even weirder. Of course, the Foamposite One ...

Geoff Hollister Feb. 3, 1946 — Feb. 6, 2012

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:35:53 +0000

It's hard to believe that Nike was once a small company, dwarfed by their German rivals and reliant on some ground-level guerilla tactics when it came to marketing that sound crude by today's standards, where strategy after strategy sits in place to keep Nike Inc on top. Geoff Hollister, who passed away yesterday, saw the brand develop from distribution and consultancy at grass roots level to something significantly bigger, with a crucial role that saw him operating as Nike employee #3 (after Jeff Johnson) and offering an extra perspective beyond Phil Knight's enviable business aptitude and Bill ...

adidas Originals Superstar 80s Big Sur/Orange

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:26:29 +0000

At Crooked Tongues we're prone to padding out News pieces from a mix of habit and obsessive compulsive disorder. We were doing it a long time before some fellow in a Superdry t-shirt came into the office and told us that it was good, because it's content creation and content creation is apparently awesome. That's fifty or so words already, and we haven't even used the words adidas Originals or Superstar 80s yet. We honestly believe that we might have used up our quota of Superstar talk back in 2005 with that wave of Shelltoe colourways ...

adidas Originals BC/Baltic Cup reissue

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:44:01 +0000

The adidas Baltic Cup is one of those adidas Originals reintroductions that you don't see coming. Now known as the BC, we first saw the Baltic Cup in the Consortium Tabula Rasa pack that offered some significant reissues and alterations despite that unassumingly blank facade. And you knew that lead to more colourways, didn't you? But like last year's ZX 380 drops, the BC has been treated with a certain reverence. adidas Originals are aware that these might appeal to the everyman with their ageless silhouette, but it's the connoisseurs who appreciate the resonance of an ...

NSW Manor Premium

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:42:35 +0000

These aren't usually our kind of thing. The office is split on the Zoom Toki's appeal, and we'd kind of like to see the Sabaku pushed again, with its casual mix of Blazer and Chukka, or a campaign built around the Outbreak (we remember a retro hitting the sale racks a few years back). But the Manor is actually a decent shoe when it's given the premium treatment. We had an inline sample floating around for a while that never inspired us in any way, but these are okay — the key to the appeal is that ...

adidas Originals Münchens for March

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:47:47 +0000

If the adidas Consortium München is shaping up to be wildly out of your price point, these inline editions that are set for a March release still bring out the best in the shoe. For a while, a couple of these colourways were strictly a size? exclusive, and we flipped out over the green and white variations that are some of the best Münchens to date. Next month they arrive in the store. The chunk of that PU sole that represents adidas in its purist, terrace-trend led form mixed with that mesh and suede upper is instantly appealing. We're ...

Nike Sportswear Cortez Classic OG Nylon QS

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:42:24 +0000

Who's testing the classic Nike Cortez? The 1970's archives have been pillaged for reissues, but few — bar maybe the Waffle Racer, Bruin and Blazer — can test the Cortez for icon status that harks back to the brand's earliest days. As Nike's 40th commences, we've seen some reissues that take it back to the essence. We're seeing reissues of the 1971 Cortez with the heel tab and different sole unit and we're ever seeing retros of Prefontaine's running spikes as a Racer design. But this variation of the Cortez is king. 1975's ...

adidas Consortium Made in Germany München

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:23:57 +0000

The adidas München is a shoe we love. Some terrace classics need some sub-cultural context to assist an appreciation and others are a territorial affair. But the München is a shoe with wider appeal, like the mighty Trimm Trab, with the lightweight sole unit and keep fit/training intent. The shoe that had a curious Suisse spinoff in the early 1980's debuted at the end of the 1970's as the evolution of the München design. We've long marveled at how adidas designs seemed to get a redux to keep up with new technologies and work with existing ...

New Balance & nonnative CM997HNN

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:41:06 +0000

Over the last few years, New Balance have been putting out plenty of product that never used to make these shores. We quietly lusted after the United Arrows 997.5 design from a few years back that applied the pink pop to the upper but switched the 997's clean midsole for the more elaborate ABZORB sole that was usually affixed to the 998. It was a low-key mix of 1991 and 1993, and nobody could even be bothered to replaced the '998' emboss from the outsole. But it didn't matter, because we were smitten. We assumed that the ...

Kazuki Kuraishi x adidas Originals Q&A

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:17:24 +0000

Kazuki Kuraishi is one of the reasons we still have faith in the collaboration. Humble but remarkably talented, he knows everybody who needs to be known in Tokyo and has carved out his own lane as the go-to man to get it done. Having worked with Burton, BAPE, NBHD and visvim, he became affiliated with adidas Originals around the time of theexcellent BAPE collaboration in 2003.

That affiliation became something bigger in early 2009, when the first ObyO Kazuki releases dropped. Brands go around the houses (actually, they just seem to trawl the hype blogs) when it comes to channeling ...