Kids Toe the Mark, Bare Their Soles for the Hip Sneaker
Emsa Harding, a fashion victim at age 9, was shot down one day at Santa Ana’s Greenville Elementary School. The humiliation of this crash-and-burn still turns his face a hot red color.
“I came to school in slip-ons painted with sayings like ‘chill out,’ ‘I’m bad,’ ‘cool’--all the weird things,” he recalls with appropriate drama for his audience, 15 sympathetic classmates who gathered around like a mini-support group to re-live the war story.
“My mom bought them and made me wear them, and I was freaking out! Totally embarrassed! When I got home, I threw them away.”
His face still reflects the emotional wound.
“That was soo AW-ful!”
“Like no way!” those around him agree.
Bill Milter, a grown-up, is a veteran of shoe skirmishes. His battlefield isn’t the schoolyard but a shoe store--in this case, the one where he works, Newport Children’s Bootery in Fashion Island. Here, his rank is that of mediator.
This war is hell, he says.
Who’s facing off?
“It’s kids--even the youngest kids, age 5 and 6--and it’s the moms. The kids pick out something; the moms pick out something else. It goes back and forth: this is too expensive; that isn’t what everyone has.”
Jeez, he shakes his head.
Who wins?
“Who do you think?
“Not the mother.”
Bart ‘n’ the Simpsons. Burgers ‘n’ fries. Kids ‘n’ sneakers.
Few pairings incite kids’ passions as much as a pair of Nikes, Reeboks, L.A. Gears or any canvas, rubber, leather or synthetic athletic shoes.
Casual “sneaks” constructed of simple canvas have gone the way of the dinosaur. Simple lace-up basketball or tennis-correct shoes gloriously made for comfort are no longer runaway sellers. Those rubber-soled ones, bleached a modest cheerleader white or dyed a discreet he-man black, are on the clearance shelves, probably never to find a happy wearer.
Like, no way! say the kids who wear, store personnel who sell, parents who buy and manufacturers who make the hundreds of athletic shoe styles on the market.
In sizes from L.A. Gear’s “crib” to men’s 15s, shoes on school-age feet “hafta be the raddest,” says Julie Marsoobian, 12, of Santa Ana’s McArthur Intermediate School.
They have to be high-top, low-cut or glow-in-the-dark; sport flashes of neon green, spangled with faux jewels or, at the very least, be technologically state-of-the-art with such features as air-cylinder suspension systems, anatomically molded ankle collars, outrigger soles and adjustable support straps.
From Reebok, there’s Weeboks--infant-sized copies of aerobic shoes--and the $170 Reebok Pump--whose ankle padding can be pumped full of air for increased support by pressing a small bas relief basketball set in the tongue.
There are tennies in pink, plaid, check and printed with dinosaurs. There are Blasters with confetti-like color splotches, Surfer Jams made of fabric like a postmodern painting, and Traffic Jams in shocking violet with a yield sign stitched on the ankle. There are Voyager shoes that glow in the night, and menacing-looking Air Streams with vents and slashes in blood red.
At a cost up to $170, they should be able to be pumped full of air, and look identical to those ultra-athlete Bo Jackson uses to sprint and leap through the TV ad.
Shoes must adhere to the girls’ Code of Cute and the boys’ Rule of Dude: Your shoes, explains Emily Golden, 10, of Greenville Elementary, “have to make you different from everybody else, just as long as you’re in.”
The fight to emerge as Top Shoe in the heap of brands competing for kids’ and teens’ feet is a battle generally lost to the Big Three: Nike, Reebok and L.A. Gear.
These brands stomp it out in a $9-billion athletic shoe market that sells 200 million pairs a year.
Who’s doing the most buying? While adults trot off with one or two pairs a year, 15- to 22-year-olds buy four, accounting for 30% of the sneakers market. And industry analysts estimate that 80% of the high-fashioned footwear--engineered for quick basketball breaks or other smooth athletic moves--is actually worn just to hang out.
“A lot of kids will have five to 20 pairs of these shoes” at a time, says Stephanie Burchfield of L.A. Gear, the manufacturer of 150 different footwear styles.
“Kids won’t wear anything off-brand. They really won’t,” says Jim Hart, manager of Fashion Island’s Fan Club athletic shoes-and-more store.
“My little brothers will die if they don’t have Vans; they’ll die,” Mission Viejo High’s Lisa Bromwell, 17, says of the popular deck shoes. “I mean, my mom to be practical might go to K-Mart or Target to shop (for the boys), but they’ll go to school in soccer cleats before they’ll wear those.”
Don penny loafers, saddle shoes or any other footwear considered more appropriate for what one 14-year-old described as “old folks; you know, like 18 and older,” and “you won’t be hassled or anything, but you’ll just kinda know: everyone will look down on you,” says Paul McAdams, 13, of the Newport Christian School in Newport Beach.
Primary symbols of hip and signs of with-it-ness, athletic shoes are more than mere comfort and function. “Teens can’t buy the BMW or Mercedes, so they make a statement in their footwear,” says John Morgan of a Reebok outlet in Stughton, Mass.
Manufacturers of athletic shoes, Morgan says, are at the mercy of consumers who have an attention span that results in a very short shoe shelf life. Reebok comes out with a “new” shoe every six months to keep them interested, while just five years ago, a shoe might be considered hip for a full two years.
The 12-to-18-year-old “really churns this industry,” Morgan says. “They can cut you in half” if kids decide that a particular shoe is no longer cool.
Trendy isn’t the only message kids send with their Keds. “Your shoes are, like, materialistic things, like cash,” says Smith Reao, 18, of El Camino College. “If you spend 100 bucks on a pair of Nikes, you’re, like, oooohh. You’re sportin’ money.”
Reeboks’ Morgan agrees: “In a market where the average sneaker is $30 to $50, the fact a shoe is $170 makes it ‘it.’ ”
Shoe engineering advances such as integrated, air-filled supports--sophisticated “suspension systems”--once reserved for, as Morgan says, “the running geeks who had to have all the technology”--have made their way into basketball, aerobic and even everyday hangin’ out sneakers.
Kids, he says, are totally turned on by high tech. “Line up 15 shoes and they can tell you what they each retail for just by checking out the features.”
Shoes considered the raddest of the moment are “going like hot cakes,” says Mitch Abramson, 20, assistant manager at Mission Viejo’s Athlete’s Foot shoe store.
One day before Christmas, the store’s entire stock of 15 pairs of Pumps sold out in two days, he adds, which is faster than any shoe he can recall. At $170 a pop? Says Abramson: “They’re a necessity. It’s hard to go for second best when everyone else has top of the line.”
Indeed, Nike’s Air Trainer (the $109 “Bo Jackson shoe”) is another top-of-the-line style that recently sold out in three days at Oshman’s Sporting Goods at South Coast Plaza. All 30 pairs.
“Kids’s aren’t interested in what the shoes do ,” says Bret Viklund of the store. “They want them because they’re new--a different concept.”
When it comes to teens and their tennies, “they’re very face value,” says Reeboks’ Morgan.
Companies pay megabucks for athlete and celebrity endorsements: Madonna will soon speak for Nike. L.A. Gear pitch people include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Elvis-ex Priscilla Presley and, in a major coup, rock icon Michael Jackson, whose “Unstoppable” sneaker will resemble a space boot.
But, says Morgan, “the kids don’t care. They aren’t dummies. They know shoe companies spend X amount of dollars for the name, and they don’t like to be put on.”
What ultimately ties ‘em on to teens’ feet is the look. “You can function the shoes to death--make them so they can help a kid run faster, jump higher and break out of jail,” Morgan says. “But if they don’t look great, forget it.”
“Great,” of course, is a relative term, blown in and out again by the winds of trends. What Morgan calls the “clean, fast” look now postdates the “molded componentry” (Velcro straps-look) that was hot six months ago. The neon colors happening now are paving the way for the totally coordinated ensemble idea on the horizon.
Indeed, L.A. Gear already has shirts, skirts, pants and other outfits to match their shoes, and other companies are following suit by developing shoe-enhancing clothing lines.
But no one get comfortable: This air stream is traveling at supersonic speed, and just when a kid might think it’s safe to sport to school a pair of purple-edged Blasters, the chances are good that he’ll be just a blast from the past. A bust.
You know how it goes, Morgan says: “That was last month.”
