“This might all seem blatantly obvious” is maybe a disclaimer I should put atop every single one of these columns I write. I definitely thought about putting it at the start of this one. But on the other hand, maybe these things aren’t obvious to everyone. If they were, you’d tell me, right? Right? Good.
Because maybe these things are only obvious to those of us who think far too much about sneakers, and where the whole market—or culture, or whatever you’d like to call it—has been, and where it’s going. Is this still a disclaimer? Looks like it. Enough of that.
we get re-retros of models that have already come back again and again—the Air Jordan 1, the adidas KB8, the Reebok Question. And those, after so many renditions, are starting to spoil. Is this the end?
Here’s what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately—performance sneakers. Not in terms of their performance (which, in these times is generally excellent), but in terms of their place in the overall sneaker circle of life. Hakuna matata and whatnot. Because, to the casual observer, maybe they don’t seem to matter as much as they used to. Take signature basketball sneakers, for instance. LeBron James barely wore his LeBron XI last year, and Derrick Rose, who’s played 10 games over the past two seasons, has missed entire iterations of his own signature line, which come at the rate of two new ones per season. So what? Companies have that pillowy cushion of retro to fall back on, right? Well, kind of.
Let’s swerve for a minute and talk about extinctions. Species have been dying off for as long as there have actually been species. Some can simply vanish without causing any sort of ripples. Take the dodo, which went out in the 1600s, or the passenger pigeon, which went from everywhere to nowhere in a matter of decades in the 1900s. When they went extinct, nothing else was affected much. But there are other species that, if they went under, would take a lot more with them. Which gets us back to performance shoes. Signature hoops shoes in particular.
Somewhere around 2003 or so (not-so-coincidentally when a certain 6’6” guard retired), the impact of performance basketball shoes as lifestyle products took a bit of a dive. Kobe was a sneaker free agent, LeBron was a rookie, and adidas’ team-first approach (was that the chicken or the egg?) didn’t make matters better. The Air Jordan was no longer designed by Tinker Hatfield, no longer worn by Michael Jordan, and its relative importance was as low as it had ever been. It didn’t matter much then. It’s starting to matter now.
Retro, as it is, started on a roughly 10-year cycle. Again, this was due to Michael Jordan, whose retirement in October of 1993 sparked Nike’s first Air Jordan retros the following year. But the timing makes perfect sense: Kids in their teens are the ones who lust after certain shoes, and young adults in their 20s have the disposable income to acquire them. A decade is about right for a resurgence. Look how the early adidas Kobes and Reebok Iversons returned. More or less right on schedule.
But look at store shelves (and, er, sneaker websites) now. Where are the retros from 2004? Or 2000, for that matter? Where are the Shox BB4s, the adidas A3s, the Reebok Answer IXs? Instead, we get re-retros of models that have already come back again and again—the Air Jordan 1, the adidas KB8, the Reebok Question. And those, after so many renditions, are starting to spoil. Is this the end?
Short answer: Probably not. Things have gotten better. Every day on my way to work, I walk past a high school, and while Jordan retros are as prevalent as ever, there are an equal number of kids in current models—primarily KDs and LeBrons. If those kids grow up to want back what they wore in school, that next generation of retros should be set. And if Derrick Rose comes back strong, if LeBron embraces the LeBron 12, the cycle will get fully back on track.
Still, a lesson can still be learned. Retro may be king now, but it’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re at.
Russ Bengtson is a senior staff writer at Complex who still owns multiple pairs of Air Jordan XX2s. Follow him on Twitter here.
