Sneak a look at iconic footware

LONDON: Where once trainers were nothing more than utilitarian footwear used to clad one’s feet when those feet were being active, they now possess the sort of cultural import exhibitions are staged to honour.

Greatest Sneakers of All Time opened in London this week. Its aim, says curator Neal Heard, is “to trace the earliest known iterations of the shoe but primarily to focus on its more recent evolution”.

Though variation have been used across all sports since the mid-18th century, when rubber was discovered, their cultural significance is still a relatively recent phenomenon. Before the 1970 World Cup final in Mexico City, for example, Pele, the world’s greatest footballer, was sneakily paid an additional £120 000 by the makers of his boots, Puma, to delay the kickoff by retying his laces.

This forced the TV cameras to focus on him, thereby affording a global TV audience several moments to not only admire his aerodynamic boots, but also to covet them. The sports shoe has never been mere footwear since.

By the end of that decade, British football casuals, having followed their teams across Europe, were bringing back shoes no one else in the UK had seen before – particular kinds of Adidas and Diadora. A few years on, US hip hop had ele- vated trainers to iconic status, no act more so than Run DMC, whose 1986 hit My Adidas was unequivocal in its slavish appreciation of box-fresh leather. Before long, everybody had at least one pair.

The exhibition offers arcane facts on sneaker history – the origins of the Nike swoosh; the tasselled boots Muhammad Ali favoured – alongside the personal collections of two sneaker obsessives who labour under the pseudonyms Brooksy and Kish Kash. Between them they boast the most exhaustive collection of trainers in the UK, the rarest of which are valued in the region of £9 000 (R150 500).

The exhibit’s centrepiece is a wall devoted to the 25 great- est trainers, as voted for by a global poll.

The list includes such perennials as Adidas Stan Smiths, Nike Air Jordans and Chuck Taylor’s Converse All Star, once the shoe of choice of basketball players, now an essential part of any thirty-something mother’s outfit when she’s on the school run.

“People always thought the trainer obsession would peak,” says Heard, “but instead it keeps growing. Everybody wears them and there really is no age limit. I’m a dad now, but I still wear my Adidas with pride. My 12-year-old daughter does, too.” – The Independent

Sneakers have become more than just something to wear on your feet, as a London exhibition demonstrates.