In the mid-1980s, the shoe industry was boiling. Adidas had started flirting with hip hop and street culture (an idyll that culminated in that RUN-DMC hit called My adidas) , Converse boasted of dominating basketball courts with its old-fashioned classics, and Nike was trying to take the hit. at the table to change his luck at once. Back then, a few sneakerheads (fans of sneakers above all else) were beginning to tinker with shoe customization, the most famous being Bobbito Garcia. He would write years later, already in 2003, a bestseller called Where'd you get those(Where did you get those) and he's unanimously regarded as the industry's first great sage - he was also the first to add color to the iconic Air Force 1s. At that time, long before Mark Parker's arrival at the brand management, Nike did not understand very well the weight that street wear was acquiring in the big cities of both coasts.
Michael Jordan's breakthrough into the NBA, Nike's need to turn the tables, and the privileged minds of designers Peter Moore, Bruce Kilgore and Tinker Hatfield worked the miracle. Hatfield would later become famous for the legendary pattern called Elephant print. The artist (in capital letters) has his own episode in the Netflix series, Abstract: The art of design, in which Michael Jordan himself appears. The bestial influence of his work would not be understood without his work in those days. The color, the audacity, the shoe's own marketing campaign and the fact that it violated NBA rules when it came to footwear made it the most famous shoe of all time. In fact, it still is, more than three decades later.
The great merit of the first Jordan, beyond the cleverness of its design, the pattern or the idea of losing your mind with color, is the policy that it generated in conceptual terms and that connected the very hectic universe of pop culture. At last sport and street were directly connected and did not play on different fields. Phil Knight, president of Nike at the time, saw clearly that playing conservatism was over, that the brand's future lay in betting on a more radical product, closer to the consumer profile that influences others. It was a time when the only way to know what you were wearing was to look at the feet of those around you. No internet, no youtubers, no instagramers: the street courts, the clubs, the shops in your neighborhood.
Hatfield was commissioned in 1988 to solo design what many consider the shoe that changed everything: the Jordan III. The shoe came with the legendary elephant print, a soft leather that allowed you to put it on new and feel it hugging the foot and the famous Jordan Brand logo: the jumpman. In addition, he arrived with a complementary clothing line and a remembered Spike Lee campaign with Michael Jordan himself. Hatfield himself remembers that this model is "probably, the shoe saved Nike". The Chicago Bulls player planned to leave the brand and there had even been talks with Adidas. Hatfield's irruption, his relationship with Jordan and the sagacity and intelligence of his designs, changed the history of sneakers forever.
In 1985 and 1986, one could get Jordan for about 70 euros. They sold for tens of thousands and were carried by all types with influence on the world of street culture. In 2020, if you want original Jordan, with its box, unused, you will need between 5,000 and 7,000 euros. Not only that, if you want to get hold of some of the collaborations between Nike and Off White, you must prepare between 1,400 and 2,800 euros (depending on size and color), and if what you like are collaborations with Spike Lee, or Hiroshi Fujiwara (the HeadPorter or Fragment brain) will have to prepare a bag of money.
Just take a look at Flight Club, the reference store for the sale and resale of sneakers, the one that has its finger on the pulse of a scene that moves millions. Nothing rivals Jordan's prices. Only some dunks, especially the whole second wave of SBs, thought to skate, after the failure of the first: the What the Dunk, the Freddy Krugger, the De La Soul or the Tiffany are shoes loved by any lover of street culture . All classic cut dunks, along with Jeff Stapple projects like the Pidgeon or the wooden-based sneaker from Michael Lau, the Hong Kong vinyl toy designer, are always in the ranking of models whose resale price is draw with three zeros. But only the Jordan have reached four. With two exceptions: the first is the Kanye West collection for Nike, before moving to Adidas. The Yeezy Red October cost between 121 and 22,000 euros; the rest do not drop below 3,500. The second is the Air Mag Back to the future: if you find any purchases, put them in a closet, and in five years you will have your pension insured.
The Jordans are today a religion, there are collectors who only dedicate themselves to them, the brand has evolved without losing its essence and is capable of dressing clubs like Paris Sant Germain, launching some of the most sought-after collaborations of the moment or to continue claiming a glorious legacy, based on daring to go where no one had gone before and it can be said –without fear of being wrong- that Nike, the world of hot shoe or the universe of street wear, would not be what they are without them.
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