A handful of shoes have escaped being shoes. The Air Force 1 came out in 1982 and Nike keeps making it because the demand never stopped. The Jordan 1 was banned by the NBA, which turned out to be the single best marketing event in sportswear history. The Chuck Taylor has barely changed since the 1920s.
What they have in common is silhouette. You can identify all of them from a side profile in one colour, which is why they work at cursor size and why the counterfeit market is so enormous.
The culture around them got serious fast. Release dates, raffles, resale values, and an entire vocabulary for condition and colourway. There are people who own a hundred pairs and wear four. There are people who queued overnight for shoes they intend to keep in a box.
The Air Max deserves a mention for making the cushioning visible, which was a design decision about honesty and turned out to be a design decision about hype.
This collection covers the icons - Nike's big three, Vans Old Skools and Converse in black and white. Fanart, sized for a pointer.
