My first pair of Nike Air Force 1 sneakers were all-white low-tops with polished silver hardware and a powder-pink swoosh. My elementary self, age 8, was over the moon. The shoes were a gift from my aunt’s boyfriend at the time, a sneakerhead who moonlighted as a hip-hop DJ in the ’90s and was dressed in Tommy Hilfiger and Air Jordan. (He had also given me my first pair of ice-blue Timberland boots a few years earlier.) He wore them and was cool, so in turn, I thought they were cool.
I attended several Indianapolis private schools with strict dress codes. At St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School, in particular, a clean, white sporty shoe was a way for me to show some personality in a sea of khaki and plaid. The sneakers also came in handy for my extracurricular activities in the evenings like cheerleading. After school every day, I took a wet cloth and added soap to it to clean the soles of my shoes. Every month or so, I would soak the laces in a water bottle with bleach.
Hip-hop and rap music have been a prominent part of my upbringing for as long as I can remember. My family listened to it both daily in the home and at large group celebrations. When I was 10 years old, I heard St. Louis rapper Nelly wax poetic about “Air Force Ones” in his song of the same name for the first time. One lyric from the Nelly hit, in particular, talks about the need for not one but “two pairs” — a nod to the drug dealers of the ’80s and ’90s who would ditch their “Forces” as soon as they had a scuff or smudge and had backup pairs as a sign of wealth. (The shoes were originally called “Forces” when they debuted on the market in 1982.) Given how easy it was to see any imperfection on the all-white colorways, keeping a crisp pair in your arsenal became an instant flex of a low-effort lifestyle. This made me realize how integral the shoe was for me and Black culture.
Then I witnessed Forces blow up in more mainstream audiences: Designers like Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy created their version of it; world-renowned sushi chef and restaurateur Nobu Matsuhisa made optic-white low-top “Air Force 1” sneakers, paired with Plissé Issey Miyake pants, his uniform. (The Museum of Modern Art even named the sneaker one of 111 pieces defining the current scope of fashion in its 2017 “Items: Is Fashion Modern?” exhibit alongside Levi’s 501s.) It was weird to see the way they were being co-opted by audiences that had generally disregarded them in the past. But it didn’t really bother me until I noticed that wearing banged-up sneakers was becoming the norm — seemingly stripping them of their importance within my community.
Today, I can’t walk through a single New York neighborhood without seeing someone between the ages of 10 and 25 wearing a pair of these basketball shoes with everything from cropped jeans to a minidress in the summer. And, along with every 13-year-old, they had no qualms about getting them dirty. Unlike the affluent rappers and industry luminaries sporting the sneaker sans scuffs and scratches, theirs are very dirty. Countless memes and TikTok videos call out those who let their Forces get so banged up, sticking true to the ideology that clean shoes are a sign of status.
I recently found my current pair in the back of my closet. They are dingy. But instead of feeling guilty at my lack of care for such a cultural staple, I can’t help but see my life in every crease: whether it’s the scuffs from weekends spent hopping between frat houses and sports bars around Miami University’s campus in Ohio or traveling back and forth from the Midwest to New York interviewing for internships and jobs, learning the ins and outs of the subway system along the way. They’re completely customized to our experiences, and washing them away for some feigned level of status seems counterproductive — especially when I would argue that a good measure of how rich someone’s life is is all the places they’ve traveled, the people they’ve met, and the things they have done. What better way to represent that than through our shoes?
Don’t get me wrong, I still love a clean pair, but I like to think it is akin to Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s beat-up Birkins or Miu Miu’s messy bags from the runway — the thing they have in common is that they tell a story. And if our bags can be a bit disheveled as a reflection of our lives, why wouldn’t we expect our sneakers to be the same?
By Shelby Ying Hyde , 2024-04-08 22:14:15
Source link
