Nowadays, Sneakers Offer Looks Fit for a Museum
The base, made of a powder gray puckered material, is topped on both sides by three streams of black rubber that curve over a checkered landscape. A silver and black fabric that resembles mesh is stitched above that, along with several mysterious raised triangular symbols. Strings laced across the top join the sides.
The object described above is the Reebok DMX RXT athletic shoe. Hold it in your hand, with its more than 10 different surface materials dancing before your eyes, and it is clear that somehow, sometime, in the past 15 years, sneakers have entered the rarefied realm of sculpture.
Basketball shoes in particular have variously become body art, foot armor, foot jewelry--a young male fetish and adornment. For the youngsters, roughly ages 12 through 17, who fuel this multimillion-dollar market but may not yet drive a car, the shoes can also be the foot-transportation equivalent of a Lexus or a Benz.
In recent years, there have been several indicators of the increased detail, almost sculpting, of what are now far too elaborate to simply be called “sneakers.” Maybe it was when soles grew so thick, they resembled a layer of cake with wavy icing. Or maybe it was shoes that emitted light from the heels. It could have been the metallic blue Nike Air Foamposite--a shoe without stitching that looks like a sadist’s custom leather sock. Maybe it was the futuristic Adidas Equipment Elevation or the Air Jordan XII that resemble moon boots. Maybe it was the first sighting of a skinny 12-year-old’s spindly legs sticking out of shoes so clunky you feared the child was sporting cement blocks.
It’s almost difficult to remember that just 15 years ago, a sneaker (or, as it was called then, “a running shoe”) was considered elaborate and high-tech if it had an added wedge under the heel to absorb shock. Since then, the appearance of shoes once used just to play or knock around in has become more complex. In some cases, these changes have occurred as a result of technological improvements. As researchers find, for example, more ways to absorb the shock of the running, jumping, pivoting and turning that athletes must do, shoe soles have taken on any number of new configurations. Nike’s Air Max shoes, designed for big players like Shaquille O’Neal or Chris Webber, look as if they are floating on a little inner tube.
And this business of who the shoe is designed for makes all the difference. No wonder some little kids look so funny in them (but you can’t convince them of that, you over-the-hill tasteless adult, you). Most of them need to grow about 24 inches and gain 200 pounds to really balance the power of what is on their feet. There is a big difference between these shoes being worn on the court of the new MCI Center and being on the feet of a child using them to walk to school. There is a difference between an athlete receiving free shoes before each game and the customers who drift into a sports shop to buy sneakers.
In the store, more than 200 sneakers are displayed on the wall in tight rows, creating the kind of collective visual effect that in an art museum or gallery would be called an installation (“A Contemplation on Coverage of the Feet”). On the side profiles of the sneakers there are wild zigzags, waves that simulate the oceans, others resembling dinosaur teeth, amorphous egg shapes that look like they actually might hatch. The overall palette is a wash of white, navy and gray--the no-brainer, safe colors of the industry. But here and there is a red, a gold, a chartreuse.
Gender definitely plays a role in sneaker taste. Whether because of marketing or consumer choice, the shoes offered to women are much quieter--lots more white space, thinner soles, fewer bells and whistles.
If these shoes remind you of something that Marvin the Martian, the X-Men or the Power Rangers might wear, you’re on the right track. Cartoons, comic books and other realms of popular culture influence shoes, according to E. Scott Morris, a 31-year-old designer for Reebok. He said that he designed one pair with the idea that Batman might wear them. For eight years he was a member of the Marine Corps, and he’s fascinated by the design of weapons. So he made a sneaker, the Kingpin, that looked like a grenade--there was even a pull-ring in the back. But it didn’t sell well.
“People told me it was the ugliest shoe they had ever seen,” Morris admits.
Before going to Reebok, Morris designed G.I. Joes and Transformers for Hasbro. So it’s easy to understand why his sneakers, as well as some others, look as though they might sprout wings, or even a second set of sneakered feet--and take off on their own.
