How Michael Jordan's Sneakers Shaped Basketball and Fashion History
From controversial basketball shoes to a multi-billion dollar brand, we look at the evolution of Air Jordan sneakers in celebration of his 60th birthday.
Before Air Jordans became the de facto basketball shoe, Converse All-Stars were the official sneakers of the NBA. Can you imagine Lebron James even stepping onto the court in a pair of Converse, let alone playing a full game in them? It seems almost criminal now that basketball stars were ever shooting hoops in the simple, flat-soled silhouette, especially when we are so conditioned to seeing them in the ever-evolving color-coated models of Air Jordan sneakers. Since its debut in 1985, the Michael Jordan-owned label has unveiled a new shoe every year, each time with more anticipation than the last. It's fitting then that the man who redefined the basketball game on the court is the same man who redefined the sneaker game off of it. In celebration of one of the biggest basketball stars' 60th birthday, take a look at the evolution of the iconography of the Air Jordan.
Once a Nike collaboration negotiated by Jordan’s savvy agent at the time, David Falk, the Jordan brand is now its own multi-billion dollar corporation. In the expository Chicago Bulls Netflix docuseries The Last Dance, Falk details how he convinced Nike to make the 1984 North Carolina University rookie, Mike Jordan, a deal like no other. The best players back then only received about $100,000 for a shoe contract, but Jordan was offered around $2.5 million over five years. Shockingly, Jordan initially wanted to turn the mega-allowance down in hopes of partnering with his then favorite brand, Adidas. The Nike competitor represented Los Angeles Lakers star Marques Johnson who Jordan admired, and in comparison Nike was a small, obscure company producing track shoes out of Japan. Ultimately it was his father, Michael Jordan Sr. who convinced the college star he would be a fool not to accept.
Falk’s deal demanded that the Chicago Bulls player have his own shoe line and annual drop schedule of one new shoe per year. Nike had just come out with its new “air sole” technology and since Jordan spent much of his game time in the air scoring dramatic dunks, Falk decided the name “Air Jordan” would befit the line. The idea that a basketball player would have his own shoe seems commonplace now, but then the arrangement was highly controversial. The NBA liked Converse shoes because they were all white, accented only by team colors to complement each set of team uniforms. Every player was meant to wear the same shoe to match their jerseys as a way of “equalizing players and promoting a team atmosphere,” according to the NBA at the time. In fact, it was a rule that players only wear white or black shoes and match their teammates. The underlying purpose behind the rule was to ensure emphasis was placed on franchise culture and administrative establishment rather than on the individual celebrity of especially valuable players.
Some of Michael Jordan’s greatest accomplishments as an NBA All-Star were fighting for more player’s rights within the NBA, which had a history of purposely undervaluing and silencing its players. The birth of the Air Jordan line in the form of the iconic black, red, and white pair of Air Jordan 1s he wore to a Madison Square Garden preseason game in 1985 was the spark to making these changes.
Of course the NBA notified both Jordan and Nike that because his new shoes clashed with his teammates’ they were banned from game courts. This did little to stop the player-corporation-duo though. Nike stuck back with an ad capitalizing on the scandal with Jordan cast as the star. The camera pans down the player from head to balck and red shoe. A voiceover states that “on October 15th, Nike created a revolutionary new basketball shoe.” The camera lands on Jordan’s Air-clad feet. The narrator continues: “On October 18th, the NBA threw them out of the game,” just as black metal bars slam overtop the sneakers. The narrator finishes, “fortunately, the NBA. can’t keep you from wearing them. Air Jordans. From Nike.” The marketing scheme deployed by Jordan’s agent and Nike’s advertising firm Chiat/Day was intended to give Jordan his own individual identity as a player, exactly what the NBA did not want.
Prior to Jordan, tennis and golf pros were the only professional athletes with their own name-branded products. This was because they competed as individuals. Both Falk and Nike had such faith in Jordan as a player however, that they believed he deserved the same level of product endorsement despite being a basketball player. In 2018 a documentary produced by Los York Entertainment, a group that does advertising for Jordan Brand, entitled Unbanned: the Legend of AJ1, debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film details the impact of these first Air Jordans with interviews from singers, rappers, fashion designers, journalists, actors, and even politicians. Transcending the many professional backgrounds of the interviewees was a passionate love of Air Jordans. “You have to respect how powerful that was to culture and to the world,” said comedian Jerrod Carmichael in the film.
The sneakers not only changed basketball footwear forever, but gave rise to the sneakerhead culture that runs rampant today. Although the original 1985 Air Jordan 1s only retailed for $65 at the time, they would run you upwards of $20,000 on StockX. Over the years, new Air Jordan drops have been so sought after that the shoes have been linked to crimes of assault, burglary, and even murder.
In recent years, Air Jordan's value has only gone up with high fashion collaborations. Virgil Abloh’s exacto knifed rendition of the Air Jordan 1 speaks to its iconoclastic station because Abloh himself is consesiuer of only the most recognizable objects. From Ikea to Sunglass Hut and Evian water, Abloh touches that which seems untouchable, so normalized by their inescapable visual influence over pop culture. The Air Jordan's high-top silhouette has that ubiquity.
The initial “Chicago” Off-White x Air Jordan shoe was dubbed Shoe of the Year by Footwear News and has since been followed up by an all white version, University of North Carolina colorway, black metallic Off-White x Nike Air Jordan 5, and cream colored Off-White x Nike Air Jordan 4.
Dior Men artistic director (and now Fendi women’s creative director) Kim Jones also has a deep love of Air Jordan pre-dating his fashion success. Jones told Imran Amed in an episode of The Business of Fashion Podcast that as a teenager he and his friends would pool their money and line up outside their local Nike store to purchase a single pair of Air Jordans to share between them—they were that obsessed. Given the chance at Dior Men in 2021, Jones united his childhood dream and professional reality to create the most sought-after shoe: the Air Dior.
The Jordan 1 silhouette made over by Dior’s Italian leatherwork and logo print dropped mid-pandemic in June 2020 after the sneakers debuted at the Dior Men Pre-Fall 2020 show. Amidst international recession, health crisis, and global civil rights protests you’d think the timing to be a bit off, but the $2,200 shoe sold out just minutes after dropping. Afterward, their resale value quickly skyrocketed to as much as $12,000. Last year, sneakerheads spotted the Air Diors at Joe Biden's presidential inauguration, worn by Nikolas Ajagu, husband to Meena Harris, Vice President Kamala Harris' niece.
The transcontinental love of Air Jordan shared between these two designers—Abloh, a Chicago native, and Jones, from the faraway UK—is indicative of Air Jordan’s significance not only in the realm of fashion but culture as a whole. There are few celebrities, brands, or products as transcendent as Michael Jordan and the Jordan brand. The Chicago Bulls number 23 (a jersey since retired by the Bulls organization) redefined the game of basketball, the role of sports figures in global pop culture, and the fashion industry with the rise of Air Jordan.
