Sept. 17, 2021 – Over the past 150 years of sneaker history, form and function have fused as tightly as the glue that binds the sole to the shoe upper. In 2015, Out of the Box: The Rise of Sneaker Culture, a museum exhibit, told the fascinating story of sneaker hisdtory. The exhibit had its debut at the Brooklyn Museum in New York and then toured the country. A senior curator from the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Canada curated the exhibit and the American Federation of Arts organized it.

Fusing form with function in sneakers also gives sneakers soul, a thread that is woven tightly in modern culture. To explore the sneaker phenomenon, the exhibit featured film footage, photographic images and design drawings in the gallery. At the entrance, visitors were immersed in sneaker history with samples of old shoes dating to the 19th century. More than 100 samples of shoes and sneaker were on display. The evolution of the ubiquitious footwear is also a lesson in world history.

Sneaker history
Underlying innovation in many facets of society is innovation in materials science, chemistry, and industrial engineering. Sneakers fit that mold perfectly because of one substance – rubber.

According to information in the exhibit catalogue, Out of the Box: The Rise of Sneaker Culture, sneakers have their origin in the forests of South and Central America where the milky sap of the indigenous ”weeping wood” tree was used for various purposes for centuries by people in the region.

In the middle of the 18th century, Europeans took note of this unusual substance after Charles-Marie de La Condamine, a French explorer and mathematician, sent a report about the sap to the French Academy of Sciences in 1736. The sap was named “latex” from the Latin word for liquid.

But latex was a curious liquid. It melted at hot temperatures, turned brittle in cold temperatures, and coagulated quickly after coming out of the tree. Yield was also a problem. A tree could only be tapped every other day for about one cup of latex.

The material was so novel faraway countries began importing latex in the 18th century. One of its first uses was rubbing out pencil marks so its name was changed from latex to – rubber, a rather inauspicious beginning for a product that would eventually help Henry Ford put the world on wheels and Jesse Owens win four Gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

The tipping point for stabilizing rubber so that it could be used for more than erasing pencil marks came in 1838 when Nathaniel Hayward of Massachusetts added sulfur to rubber creating a resilient material. He sold the rights to his product to Charles Goodyear who then discovered that heating the sulfur-rubber combination further stabilized the product. Goodyear patented his process in 1839.

Leveraging Goodyear’s work, Thomas Hancock, a British scientist, developed a process for producing rubber in England and named it after Vulcan, the Greek god of fire. Vulcanization played a major role in the Industrial Revolution in England and the United States, which changed economies from primarily rural to urban. Factories were built in cities to produce products.

Rubber-soled shoes began being called sneakers in the late 1800s because rubber soles were noiseless, a trait quickly embraced by people not interested in sports but in sneaking up on people to steal from them. A shoe store in Chicago sought to stem the bad reputation of sneakers with an advertisement that said: “A man is not necessarily a sneak because he wears sneakers. That is a name applied to rubber sole tennis shoes.” (catalogue, p. 33)

Modern Sneaker Culture
Although rarely connected, the rise of sneaker culture merges with 20th century European and American history. As machines replaced manual labor during the Industrial Revolution in the mid to late 1800s, people had more leisure time.

Tennis, known as the “sport of kings,” became popular with the middle class. The market for shoes and clothes expanded. Rubber-soled shoes gave players better traction on slippery grass. Croquet was also played on grass so the sneaker, a rubber-soled shoe with canvas uppers, became the preferred choice of footwear for leisure activities.

Jesse Owens and modern sneaker brands
At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, both a world stage for athletic competition and a propaganda tool for Adolf Hitler, Jesse Owens won four Gold medals in track and field.

At the time, Adolf “Adi” Dassler and his brother, Rudolph, were selling athletic shoes having formed a company in 1924. The brothers wanted their shoes worn by the best athletes in the world. Because Jesse Owens was an African American, the German track coach was hesitant to comply with the brothers’ request to give a few pairs to Owens. In the end, Owens did receive a few pairs that he used for practice. An example of this German shoe is on display at the exhibit.

After World War II, the Dassler brothers had a falling out. The brothers each started their own shoe company. Rudolf formed Ruda in 1948 and then changed the name to Puma. Adi formed Adidas in 1949. The rest is history. Since 2005, Reebok, founded in England in 1895, has been a subsidiary of Adidas.

In 1964, a high-end shoe made by a Japanese company gained traction in the United States. The Onitsuka Tiger sneaker was introduced in the United States by Phil Knight who wrote a paper on the potential market for Japanese athletic shoes while a graduate business student at Stanford University. He believed the less expensive Japanese shoes could compete with Adidas and Puma. Knight struck a deal to sell the sneakers in the United States.

Knight reached out to Bill Bowerman, his track coach when he was an undergraduate at the Univ. of Oregon. Together they formed Blue Ribbon Sports to sell the Japanese shoes. Again, the rest is history. Following years of work to innovate the design of athletic shoes and Bowerman’s prediction that jogging would become a popular way for Americans to have fun and stay fit, Knight and Bowerman formed a new company in 1972 – Nike, named after the Greek goddess of victory.

A pivotal point that cemented the sneaker as a cultural artifact was Nike’s 1985 release of the first Air Jordan.

Michael Jordan first wore the shoe at the start of the 1984 season. The shoe was a leather high-top in Chicago Bulls red and black colors. But the shoes violated the NBA’s ‘uniformity of uniforms rule.’ The rules violation turned into a marketing bonanza for Nike. In 1985, the sale of Nike’s Air Jordan made more than $100 million in the first ten months. It propelled Nike to profitability.

In 2008, Nike purchased Converse, a company started in 1908 as the Converse Rubber Shoe Company.

Both sneakerheads and consumers are interested in preserving their shoes. The exhibit catalogue has practical tips on how to take care of sneakers. Included are the following:

1. Don’t wear new sneakers every day. Rotate them with another pair.
2. Let sneakers air out overnight.
3. If your sneakers get wet, dry with a soft microfiber cloth using a light blotting motion.
4. Try not to stack your boxed running shoes too high as the weight from above will crush those below.
5. Don’t pick up your shoes by the tongue.
6. Avoid storing your collection of shoes in the basement where it is damp and not insulated.
7. Even at room temperature, store your shoes away from air vents, external doorways, and windows to eliminate dramatic temperature fluctuations.
8. Protect your shoes from UV light.

From leather shoes to rubber-soled sneakers with canvas uppers to rubber-soled sneakers with leather uppers, form and function remain united.

“This exhibition demonstrates how art and an everyday staple, such as a shoe, have a commonality,” Halona Norton-Westbrook, exhibition curator at the Toledo Museum of Art, said in a press release. “In this instance, artists and fashion designers have used sneakers as a part of their palette of expression.”

Vulcan, Reebok, Adidas, Puma, Converse, Nike, and certainly others have defined sneaker culture for the past 150 years. Who are the sneaker innovators and entrepreneurs of tomorrow? Studying Greek mythology might be a good idea!

Review Questions

1. When and where was latex (rubber) discovered?

2. What innovations in processing rubber made the substance widely popular and easy to use?

3. How did sneakers get their name?

4. In what year did the first Air Jordan Nike shoe debut?

Inquiry Questions

1. What is the chemical composition of pure rubber? Research and discuss. Why do you think adding sulfur stabilized rubber?

2. How did Michael Jordan’s deal with Nike help both of them?

3. Find an example of a pun in the story.

4. Read the headline again – Sneakers Have Soles and Soul. What figure of speech is used? Discuss why sneakers have both soles and soul. Relate that discussion to the cultural significance sneakers now have throughout the world.

Worksheet