Sport and Music

The story about sneakers started in the ‘70s, when lower classes started using this primarily sports footwear for other purposes, because it was cheap. Hip-hopers embraced them in the ‘80s and the whole thing went wild when Adidas started sponsoring Run D.M.C. At the same time, the West witnessed the birth of the skateboard culture. The designers of Vans used skateboards for testing of sneakers and the first skating shoes were thus created. The ‘90s brought the ‘Jordan Revolution’ with Nike’s Air Jordans, which soon became an expensive mainstream. The author, herself obsessed with sneakers, went looking for relevant sneakers executives, designers and hunters for ‘cool’ things from New York to Tokyo.