This year, one hundred and twenty years ago, a certain
Charles Taylor was born. Taylor, a former basketball player, had been a shoe salesman
for most of his life. And yet his inheritance was to establish a multibillion greenback
industry. Through the 1930s, in one of the earliest celebrity endorsements,
Charles, better known as "Chuck," lent his name to a minimalist
high-top basketball shoe released in 1917. And the result, the Chuck Taylor All
-Star, it was possibly the first classic classic shoe.
It is, so to speak, the 501 of the shoe: refined, traveling
well and improving with age. It is still there, always defining eras. During
the 1990s, in reaction to the flamboyant and flamboyant style of sneaker that
was so in vogue, it was the "chuckies" that helped signal
anti-establishment grunge and a new EMO punk. As for the new millennium? Thanks
to the overall relaxed trend, sales are at an all-time high, with an estimated
200,000 pairs sold. And that is all day.
Wilt "the stilt" Chamberlain who frolicked at
the University of Kansas. He later scored 100 points in an NBA game as a
professional. And he used Converse
While the adoption of it beyond the athletic field was
driven first by comfort, and then only by freshness and collection, sneakers
have rarely been off the radar of sports tech or pop culture. Arguably dating
back to 1978 when Bill Bowerman paid a local graphic designer $ 10 to design a
"swoosh" logo as part of his plan to capitalize on the new jogging
craze and started a design revolution for a futuristic coach every time. more
daring. drawings.
In fact, the current conception of the current sneaker, a
term coined until the mid-20th century, by broadcaster Henry McKinney, for the
quiet steps one can take with a pair, is typically something of a sort of
'aggressive , colorful, puffy, and soft, so it can be hard to imagine that
there was a time when she, basketball or, more simply, humble tennis, was a
much less flashy, more useful product, to wear until it collapses. .
And yet it is arguably the more aerodynamic and less
athletic take on this style of footwear that makes them true design icons.
Maybe it's because technology, or the appearance of technology, is quickly
becoming outdated, or maybe it's because simplicity goes with everything. Not
surprisingly, sneaker giants Nike and Adidas have enjoyed a 21st-century
renaissance, in part thanks to re-imaginations and re-releases of their more
understated archival styles, be it the Blazer or the Stan Smith.
The Adidas Stan Smith remains an iconic and timeless
sneaker silhouette to this day.
Include among these classic sneakers not just the Converse
All Star, or its skate-inspired Skid Grip, but a host of similar styles copied
from Old Skool and Authentic by Vans, PT military styles by Novesta, Dunlop
Green Flash, nautical looks like Sperry CVO's. Topsider (which is Canvas
Vulcanized Oxford) - Pre-1960s designs, or modern interpretations of these from
Japanese brands (of course) like Shoes Like Pottery and Wakouwa.
In fact, the straightforward look of these styles may have
been altered for specialized use, either on the deck or with your deck, but it
hasn't really changed much since the 1890s. At the time, the Liverpool Rubber
Company, later acquired by Dunlop, he created his 'sand shoes', ideal for use in
the new popular British seaside holiday destination, with the durable canvas
upper sealed to a soft rubber outsole by means of a rubber strip. Hence its
nickname "canvas shoes", from the line of canvas shoes, painted next
to ships after the 1870s to indicate their maximum carrying capacity.
An advertisement for Dunlop "Sand Shoes"
Other companies with interests in rubber, such as Goodyear,
the tire manufacturer, quickly followed suit; so much, in fact, that in the
United States, in 1908, about thirty of them were combined into the US Rubber
Company. In 1917 they put their combined efforts in launching Keds;
"Peds" was the name they were looking for, Latin for
"foot," but it was already in use. This was the same year, of progression,
that the Converse All Star was released, meaning they collectively take the
title for creating the first named shoe styles.
The utility and ease of these, at a time when, rain or
shine, most men used