Peter Moore
Designer whose Air Jordan 1 shoe made Nike a global force
PETER MOORE, who has died aged 78, was creative director at Nike and then Adidas, and designed the Air Jordan 1 shoe, which revolutionised the world of trainers and shot Nike to the top of the sportswear league.
Athletes had been endorsing products for decades, but Moore and his Nike colleague Robert Strasser saw the marketing possibilities of basketball and were the first to build a strategy around designing a pair of shoes specifically for one player. In 1984 Nike signed up Michael Jordan, then a 21-year-old rookie who had just joined Chicago Bulls, for a down-payment of $250,000 and the promise of his own line of trainers (pictured below).
The term “Air Jordan” was thought up by the player’s agent David Falk, a reference to the shoes’ air-filled soles and to Jordan’s seeming ability to hang in the air as he delivered his coups de grâce. Moore used red, black and white, the Bulls colours – though Jordan initially resisted, saying that red, black and white were the “devil’s colours”, by which he meant the colours of North Carolina State, bitter rivals of his University of North Carolina college team.
Jordan first wore his signature footwear on court in November
1985; the NBA immediately banned the shoes as they violated its onecolour rule. However, he continued to wear them for home games, and was fined nearly $5,000 every time – which Nike happily paid.
They put out a television ad about the ban, and soon young people were camping out to buy a pair. As Moore put it: “Kids like that stuff … ‘I’m wearing something I’m not supposed to be wearing.’ Perfect. Couldn’t be better.”
Within a year more than a million pairs had been sold. In 2020 a pair worn by the star in 1985 in an exhibition game in Trieste, when he shattered the glass of the backboard with a shot, sold at auction for $615,000, then a record for trainers.
Peter Colin Moore was born on February 21 1944 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Raymond, a naval officer, and Mary. Graduating in Graphic Design from Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, he worked for a design studio, which he subsequently acquired.
In 1972 he moved to Portland, Oregon, and five years later took on Nike as a client. In 1983 he became their creative director.
As well as the Nike “swoosh”, the Air Jordans bore the “Jordan Wings” logo, which Moore designed after seeing a child airline passenger with a set of captain’s wings on his shirt.
“The flight attendant had just given it to him, so I said, ‘Can I have a pair of those wings?’” he recalled. “She gave me the wings, and I sat down and started drawing the wings. I put a basketball in the middle of them.”
In 1987 he designed another logo for the Air Jordan, the Jumpman, which depicted Jordan in the air, legs wide apart, in the
act of smashing home a slam dunk.
Nike continued to put out new Air Jordans at regular intervals, and are now up to the 36th iteration.
Moore left Nike in 1987 with Robert Strasser and founded Sports Incorporated, which was taken over by Adidas in 1993 as part of its drive to reconquer America (it had been a US market leader, but by then was down to a three or four per cent market share).
Moore led the launch of Adidas America, working with Kobe Bryant, and reworked the famous “three-stripe” logo into the shape of a mountain. He was later global creative director and then CEO of Adidas.
He left Adidas in 1998 but continued to work with them through his new consultancy, What’a Ya Think Inc.
Peter Moore married Christine Hummel; she survives him with their three sons.
Peter Moore, born February 21 1944, died April 29 2022