30 Things You Didn't Know About The Air Force 1

Image via Complex Original

Go figure. The man who designed the one of the most iconic sneakers in history also helped design one of the blandest and unmemorable cars of all time. But even designing something like the K-car, a budget econobox, taught valuable lessons of function driving form that would be drawn on with Nike.

Tinker Hatfield was one of the early wear testers of the Air Force 1 prototypes, and he fondly remembered the steel shank years later. Placed beneath the Air bag, it added spring to every step, serving as a primitive energy return system. Unfortunately the shank wasn't used in the production model due to liability concerns, and the concept of a stiff plate in a basketball sneaker wouldn't be revived until 1995 - in Hatfield's Air Jordan XI.

This needs some actual explanation. The Air unit made the midsole higher than ever before, so Kilgore needed to figure out how to make it stable. He turned to an unlikely inspiration - the cathedral at Notre Dame - to figure out how to angle the midsole out to have a large enough contact patch with the court.

If you ask any of the old school guys what made the Air Force 1 great, it was just playing in them. The cupsole design of the Air Force 1 was not only incredibly durable, it was also incredibly playable. And still is to this day if you ask some people.

Tinker Hatfield joined Nike as a corporate architect in 1981, and Kilgore gave him an early prototype of the Air Force 1 to play basketball in. Amazed by the performance of the sneaker, Hatfield started thinking that his skills would be better suited to designing Nike's athletic footwear as opposed to their buildings. That worked out fairly well for all involved. Hatfield was a runner in college and a football player as a youth, so one can assume it was his speed and agility that helped him stand out on the basketball court rather than his stature.

Kind of funny since the first production model not only featured a leather toebox, but a non-perforated one at that, but the initial Air Force 1 prototype utilized a lot more mesh. It was more breathable and lighter, but given the pricepoint, it was determined that there had to be more leather. Good thing that still doesn't apply (cough, Hyperfuse, cough).

A collective group called the DCEC offered up ideas on the development of the Air Force 1, among them were biomechanists, podiatrists, trainers and an aerospace engineer, who also invented the Air sole. A case of too many cooks turning out something just right.

Given the number of sneaker sequels that have dropped since, it's easy to just assume that the Air Force One was retroactively named for being the first Air Force sneaker. Not so. The initial 1982 release had "AIR FORCE I" lettering on the tongue, in homage to the President's plane. Hopefully someone at Nike sent Ronald Reagan a pair.

The Tailwind, Nike's first Air shoe, debuted in 1979, but getting Air into a basketball product proved to be a bit trickier. Running was Nike's bread and butter, it was what they were founded on. Basketball wasn't the top priority. Also, running is a heel-toe, straight line activity, while basketball was more cuts and heavy landings. This wasn't an easy project.

It was said that the original design of the Air Force 1 looked like the Michelin Man until Bruce Kilgore took over the design of what would come to be one of, if not the, most important basketball sneaker of all time.

When Nike re-issued the Air Force 1 in 1986, it was unprecedented. Yes, the Converse All Star was still around, but the idea of bringing back a shoe that was out of production made no sense. Why buy a pair of sneakers that didn't represent the pinnacle of performance? Why spend money on something that was obsolete? Oh, how silly those questions seem now.

Could any two shoes be more different? The towering Air Force 1 and the sleek, laceless Sock Racer shared the Swoosh, but that was about it. That said, nothing served better to display Kilgore's versatility - and Nike's. Thirty years later, Nike Basketball and Nike Running are still applying principles learned from the creation of those two shoes.

Legends may be born, not made, but it still takes time. The Air Force 1, despite all the firsts, was at the same time just another Nike basketball shoe that would stick around for a year and eventually be replaced by something better. In fact, by the time it was released, Kilgore - like any designer - was two or three seasons down the road already. Still, the Air Force 1 wouldn't go away that easily.

The lower cut achilles portion of the Air Force 1 was quite different from other basketball shoes. The perception of ankle stability was enhanced with the "proprioceptic belt," which became commonly known as the ankle strap. Early weartest versions had a permanent strap but some players didn't like it, so Nike made it removable.

Before it became known as the Innovation Kitchen, Nike's most creative and groundbreaking designs came from the same place the Air Force 1 did, Exeter, Nike's original research lab. So the "Uptowns" actually have Northeastern roots.

Before the Air Force 1, hightop basketball shoes featured a straight cut across the top. Made sense, a hightop was a hightop, and that was that. Worked for the Converse All Star. But Kilgore, inspired by the Approach hiker, slanted the cut from front to back, so it angled lower towards the Achilles. This made for a shoe that provided the same support, only with more flexibility. Genius.

Back in the all-autoclave-everything days, NBA players destroyed their shoes on a regular basis. Imagine a Charles Barkley type playing in Blazers. Not pretty. The Air Force 1, with its cupsole and more carefully constructed upper allowed everyone from NBA All-Stars to streetballers to drive to the hoop without fear of blowouts.

Lows came next, then the stepchild mids nearly a decade after the AF1s initial introduction. Kilgore's design was all meant to work as one, so the purest form of the Air Force 1 remains the OH high top. Word to Rasheed Wallace.

Hey Rasheed? That strap you so carelessly wear draped off the back is meant to actually help you.

One imagines this is common enough now, but just imagine as a basketball player going from a Blazer or a Bruin to an Air Force 1. We wouldn't have wanted to give them back, either. It is entirely possible that DJ Clark Kent himself still has a weartest pair that he never actually weartested (the statute of limitations has expired, right?).

Long before the Air Force 1 was introduced, those in the know rocked the Pro-Keds 69er. And they were popular enough in Harlem and the Bronx that they were more commonly known as "Uptowns" or "Uptowners."

How's that for history? Sure, Nike is only 40-odd years old, but it's not often that a company has direct roots reaching back that far. The company has changed tremendously since its Blue Ribbon roots, but it isn't only Phil Knight who maintains the original principles. Guys like Kilgore, Mark Parker and Hatfield all go back to the smaller, more nimble days. It makes a difference.

Kilgore's contributions to Nike didn't stop with the Air Force 1. Far from it. He got his start designing spike plates for track flats in the early '80s, and was still working on Olympic-level product into the 2000s. He also played a key role in the nearly two-decade project to develop Shox. And as the Director of Advanced Research and Development, he's no doubt worked on other projects that we can't even tell you about.

As part of the 25th anniversary in 2007, Nike released "lux" version of the Air Force 1 low made from real anaconda and crocodile hides. The prices were, shall we say, astronomical. Then again, so were the shoes.

If it was all up to Nike, the Air Force 1 would have never been re-issued. That just wasn't how Nike worked. They were in the business of making athletic shoes, not casual sneakers. You designed something, then moved on and designed something better. Nostalgia wasn't a factor at all. But the Air Force 1 was different. Demand made them re-think the whole idea of obsolesence. And early customizers applying "Gucci" and "MCM" material to the Swooshes helped usher in the whole concept of luxury sport. The Air Force 1 as it is today can be considered crowdsourced.

During Kobe's sneaker free agent year of 2003, he wore all kinds of sneakers, from Reebok Questions and And 1 Tai Chis to any number of retro Air Jordans in Lakers colors. But he also - for one game, anyway - turned to the Nike Air Force 1. Maybe Michael Cooper suggested it. (He also wore them to play at the Rucker, which certainly pleased the New York die-hards.)

Before the Air Force 1, most basketball shoes - most sneakers, for that matter - stuck to the tried-and-true herringbone traction pattern. Kilgore wanted to try something different. Given basketball players' use of the pivot move in the post, he came up with a circular outsole pattern designed specifically for hoops.

In 2007, for the Air Force 1s 25th anniversary, Nike Basketball designer Tracy Teague was given a seemingly impossible assignment - re-create the Air Force 1 for the modern player. The result was the Air Force 25, a shoe that bore a familial resemblance, but utilized all of Nike's modern technology. One of the less performance-oriented improvements they made was finding a way to make white whiter. The "color" was called 10a.

Do the math. After 30 years, that's close to 70 versions a year. And that's including a three-year hiatus in the early-to-mid '80s, plus those early years when there simply weren't that many variations. So there's been a lot of making up for lost time. Suck it, Henry Ford.

With 30 years of history behind it and literally thousands of styles produced, this shouldn't come as a real surprise. But unlike other long-lived sneakers, the Air Force 1 is still a viable athletic product. When was the last time you saw someone balling in Chucks or running in Cortez? Exactly.