The All-American Sneaker Gets on a High-Fashion Kick
Sneakers, with the right mix of fit, function and fashion, are going the distance from locker room to ballroom with a stop en route for a special award.
“This felt like the year of the sneaker--truly an American item whose influence has been felt worldwide,” Fern Mallis, executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, said after sneakers walked off with honors at the trade group’s awards dinner in New York last month.
Adidas, Converse, Keds, Nike and Reebok were jointly named to accept the 1993 CFDA special award for the sneaker’s “uniquely American influence on world fashion.”
Mallis said sneakers were the genesis for this year’s growth in body-conscious clothing and active sportswear.
“They’ve become a part of everyone’s life,” she said, even for those not bent on being fit. “They’re in all kinds of fabrics and colors, and you’re seeing them with evening wear and in offices.”
Indeed, sneakers were ubiquitous on spring runways, both in New York and Paris. Metallic silver tennis shoes were Donna Karan’s favorite footwear for both silver sportswear and long matte jersey evening gowns. Richard Tyler, designing for Anne Klein Collection, concocted a rope-soled espadrille sneaker, and Norma Kamali came up with funky, boot-like high-top sneakers that laced to the knee. Chanel’s standout was a white canvas high top with black tap toe, rubber lug sole, three-inch heel and $640 price tag.
“It’s very ‘90s, a much more relaxed look,” says Anne Fahey, public relations manager for Chanel in New York. “And it’s a great way to update a classic Chanel suit.”
While Chanel put its hallmark on a sneaker, other fashion designers borrowed the Adidas hallmark, the triple-track racing stripe. For spring, it appears on everything from active wear to formal wear from the likes of Isaac Mizrahi, Yves Saint Laurent, Rifat Ozbek and Anna Sui.
Just add Adidas Gazelles, those low-cut suede soccer-like shoes with the three diagonal stripes on each side.
“They’ve been discovered by a new generation, and we’re selling three or four times as many now as in the mid-’70s,” says Peter Moore, president of Adidas. The Portland company is reviving several old styles.
Joanna Jacobson, senior vice president of marketing for Converse in North Reading, Mass., agrees. “The biggest trend in the industry right now,” she says, “is basic athletic footwear from the 1970s.”
In November her company relaunched the 1974 One Star. At $50, it’s a unisex, low-top tennis sneaker.
“It’s an understated shoe that merchandises very well,” Jacobson says. “What’s back in style is clean, simple, stripped-down. It has none of the bells and whistles of the high-tech ‘80s.”
The first rubber-soled shoes were produced in the U.S. in the late 1800s, but Keds, in 1916, were the first with vulcanization, a permanent bond between canvas shoe tops and rubber soles. Converse followed in 1917 with its Chuck Taylor All Star sneaker.
But it wasn’t until the fitness-fixated 1980s that sneakers made a name for themselves, says Joanna Jacobson, senior vice president of marketing for Converse.
“At that time, people wore sneakers as a performance statement for working out,” she says, “but the comfort factor really propelled them beyond the workout.”
Makers such as Reebok, Adidas, Asics, K-Swiss, Sacony and New Balance gave sneakers cachet, cool and class, while Nike, a $3.4 billion company promoted by Michael Jordan and Bo Jackson, exhorted a nation of consumers to “Just Do It.”
Today, as fashion remains focused on fitness, sneaker manufacturers, including Britain’s Reebok, are positioned to meet a need.
“We’re responding to a younger generation that’s making a fashion statement with lower-priced shoes that don’t have so much technology,” says John Morgan, Reebok’s vice president and general manager for products in the United States.
