NIKE VINTAGE RUNNING

And how did people react to them?
When we got the first prototypes in, I met with Jeff Hollister and Jeff Johnson who created some of the shoes and had them sitting in a boardroom with a whole bunch of other people. Then someone came in and picked the shoes up and started playing with them! Bending them, trying them on, tying the laces up, you know. There was shock horror with most of the people in that room, saying ‘How could you do that to a 35 year old shoe?’ Because most of them break due to the ageing of the polyurethane. You know at the archives these days, they have to handle the shoes with white gloves because they don’t want grease spots or anything else off your fingers for that matter. The response from a lot of people is that the shoes bring them back to their childhood. We’ve obviously done some of these shoes in a contemporary colourway, but the emotional response to the memories they had either as athletes or just as people who appreciated them was very strong. Obviously there was talk of the Cortez and Farrah Fawcett, all kinds of stuff like that came out.

It seems like a dept of Nike history that hasn’t been too thoroughly examined. I mean there’s been loads of old Airmax and Jordans releases, so maybe it’s an area where Nike can instigate a certain curiosity in the real early history of the company?
That’s the opportunity I think, to educate people about things and where they come from. So much product today, people don’t understand the roots or the reason for being. It’s just a shoe, or a phone, or something which hasn’t got emotional context. So I think it’s an opportunity for people to learn more about Nike, about what its heritage is in terms of innovation, telling stories about some of the successes and even the failures.