Sneakers, Their Story is Our Own
Part 2: The Symbolic Resonance of the Air Jordan
In the second article by designer and recent PJAIT graduate Stanislav Sergeichuk, the symbolic resonance of the Air Jordan is explained and expanded on.
Yuniya Kawamura, Professor of Sociology at the Fashion Institute of Technology, classifies the phenomenon of the sneaker collection and its popularity into three periods, and names these different stages of “waves”:
1. The First Wave Sneaker Phenomenon: This occurred locally in New York in the 1970s, and it is the pre-Jordan era which is prior to the introduction of Nike Air Jordan sneakers. This was the beginning of the underground sneaker subculture with the growth of hip-hop culture. The sneaker subculture was considered a hidden community that originally came out of the poor neighbourhoods dominated mostly by racial minorities.
2. The Second Wave Sneaker Phenomenon: This is the post-Jordan era that started with the launch of the Nike Air Jordan sneakers which were produced in 1984 and released to the market in 1985. It was named after legendary American basketball player Michael Jordan. The post-Jordan era is the start of the commodification and the massification of sneakers which were intensified year after year. The sneaker phenomenon spread further and more widely to the world while gradually transcending cultural, racial, class, and national boundaries. It is no longer as underground or hidden as it used to be, although it is still a subculture. I would call it an “upperground subculture,” which is a subculture that has appeared on the social surface and has become recognizable by the masses.
3. The Third Wave Sneaker Phenomenon: This began with advent of the Internet and the development of smartphones and tablets in the twenty-first century in the West, American society in particular. We see the global spread and diffusion of the sneaker popularity in the fragmented postmodern age with an increasing usage of social media as a communication tool. The new technological trend drastically transformed the sneaker enthusiasts communication process and competition in speed. The trend that started during the Second Wave is now accelerated at a more rapid speed.[1]
Why did the hype start exactly from the Air Jordan? It appears to make sense to speak about the almost unusual convergence of many circumstances: the absolute exceptional talent of the player and his brilliant charm, a long and highly prosperous career with several wins, a well-constructed public profile, a positive historic moment, marked by the role of audiovisual media in society (including video ads), and last but not least, Nike’s strategic campaigns to promote the company during Jordan’s career and to help maintaining his public picture even further.
The Air Jordan
The initial hype surrounding the Air Jordan sneakers was greatly facilitated by the scandal and banning from official NBA matches. It is believed that the head-office of the league considered the color scheme of the first “Jordans” to be inappropriate for uniform rules. Legend has it that every entrance to the court in these shoes meant a fine of $5,000 for Jordan, which was then covered by Nike. However some experts in the history of American basketball dispute this fact, claiming that the company simply successfully promoted the story for advertising purposes. Nike released a special video ad at the same time as the scandal started:
The camera slowly slipped over the figure of the silent Jordan throwing the ball from hand to hand in those same sneakers, the stern voice behind the frame said: “On September 15th, Nike created a revolutionary new basketball shoe. On October 18 the NBA threw them out of the game. Fortunately, the NBA can’t stop you from wearing them.”[2]
The Co-Creator of Nike Phil Knight remembered: “Basketball, unlike casual shoes, was all about performance, so it fit under the Nike umbrella. And the shoe itself was terrific. It was so colorful that the NBA banned it — which was great! We actually welcome the kind of publicity that pits us against the establishment, as long as we know we’re on the right side of the issue. Michael Jordan wore the shoes despite being threatened with fines, and, of course, he played like no one has ever played before. It was everything you could ask for, and sales just took off.”[3]
This line’s success brought Nike out of the crisis which the company was in in the mid-1980s despite failed experiments with aerobics sneakers and casual shoes and a decrease of running shoes sales, which at the time were considered their specialty. Like many other successful black athletes before him, Jordan has been a symbol of African American youth and still has a very unique spot to fill in the pantheon of examples. Here the writer Mychal Denzel Smith, born after Jordan started his career at the NBA, gives us an example of the sneaker’s ‘symbolic resonance’:
“When I’m wearing a pair of Jordans, I feel more confident…I walk taller. I walk straighter” [4]
The sneaker, because of its relationship to Michael Jordan, signified an immaterial value. It’s symbolic value functions because of the relationship between Jordan, sneakers and African American culture. The sneaker then embodies what many believe to be a living proof of working social elevators. Researcher Michael Eric Dyson, reflecting on the Jordan phenomenon, points to the “fetishization of sports in the “black” culture, in which” black athletes embody social opportunities for success, closed to ordinary ‘Colored’” citizens.” However, can this explanation be considered exhaustive? In American culture, sports heroes, regardless of race, have traditionally been perceived as living proof of working social elevators.[5]
Perhaps the public image of Jordan ideally answered the request that existed in American society as a whole and within the African American community itself. If the stars of rap and hip-hop in the public mind were perceived as contradictory figures due to real or perceived connection with antisocial elements, then the image of Jordan was completely positive and, as many researchers believe, did not challenge the values of the white majority. It is no coincidence that for his apolitical position on the struggle for racial equality, Jordan has been criticised more than once by African Americans. Researcher Sean Crossson offers a critical look at the public image of the famous basketball player, suggesting that the movie “Space Jam” with Jordan “provides a seductive depiction of African American masculinity and family life. However, this utopian portrayal relies on conventional constructions of race, gender, and the family that disguises the reality for many Black families and may, in line with the American Dream itself, contribute to the perception of the marginalised and underprivileged as deviant.”
[1]Yuniya Kawamura, Sneakers: Fashion, Gender, and Subculture(Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016).
[2]AIR JORDAN 1 COMMERCIAL: Banned! (1985), accessed on 01.09.20,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5QbV-wnhtY
[3]Geraldine E. Willigan, High-Performance Marketing: An Interview with Nike’s Phil Knight,accessed on 01.09.20, https://hbr.org/1992/07/high-performance-marketing-an-interview-with-nikes-phil-knight
[4]Steven Kurutz, The Intellectual in Air Jordans, accessed on 01.09.20,
[5]https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/fashion/mens-style/mychal-denzel-smith-air-jordans.html
