The converse basketball sneaker is arguably one of the most famous and widely-recognized shoes in the world. Practically 270,000 pairs of these shoes are sold everyday, across the globe. Their unique and recognizable design makes them a massive fan favorite and has led to the pop-up of similar shoe lines since their founding in the 1900’s.
Converse was founded in 1908 as a rubber producer based in Massachusetts, by a man named Marquis Mills Converse. The company had originally started with the main goal of making all varieties of products out of rubber. As put by Sam Samllidge, Converse’s brand, archivist “really anything you could make out of rubber, we tried to make something out of rubber.”
The now-famous All Star shoe model line was released in 1916, when Converse began producing shoes for the widely-growing sport basketball, which had massive benefits when compared to then-popular sports such as baseball and football. Basketball only needed an indoor and more practical space, when compared to football.
The All Star shoe was not the first of its kind, but it was arguably the most unique. The outer heel patch, for one, was specially designed to help with protecting the players’ ankle bones. Furthermore, the “diamond tread” pattern on the outside of the shoe was a very noticeable and eye-catching part of the design. As much as it was stylistic, it was also practical. It gave friction for moving in multiple directions.
These aspects of the shoe’s design made it a one-of-a-kind for its era.
Now, who’s Chuck Taylor?
A big trend in basketball back in the 1920’s was for companies to start their own personal teams as a means of advertising. These were essentially fancy promotions. The head coach of the Converse team was a man named Charles Chuck Taylor. Taylor would often take other coaches to sports stores after matches, where he would get them to purchase the All Stars, and as time continued he himself became directly associated with the shoe.
Taylor was more of a salesman than anything.
“He wasn’t brought onto the company because of his success as a sport hero… Chuck Taylor is seeding interest in basketball. He’s going around places and expanding the popularity of the game, he’s thereby expanding interest in footwear to be worn for the game. I think that’s really where his genius lies,” stated Elizabeth Semmelhack, the creative director and senior curator at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto.
That’s when the great depression struck, in the 1930’s, hurting many brands’ profits, including Converse’s. Companies began looking for ways to make their products stand out and be more unique. Converse’s solution to this problem? To put Chuck Taylor’s name on the shoe’s heel patch. Those patches are still around today.
This was an interesting decision, considering Taylor never even had any involvement in the shoe to begin with. “Unfortunately, we don’t have anything in our archive that shows that he made modifications,” says Smallidge. “He might have gotten feedback from coaches and players, which would have then been passed along, but the idea that he was in a workshop tinkering away creating improvements is not based in reality.”
As the decades continued on Converse would grow more and more. In ’57 they released the low-top oxford version of their original All Star as a way to help players move their ankles more freely.
Demand for leather basketball shoes began to fall by the end of the 50’s however, quickly becoming an issue for Converse. Technological advancements allowed newer, more modern companies to begin swallowing up the sports market. However, Converse was smart about this, and as they became less popular on the court, they were quickly becoming a name in lifestyle. Eventually, Converse would transition from basketball to normal life.
Converse had set itself up perfectly to transition from being a basketball shoe into being the perfect lifestyle shoe.
Sam Smallidge
The All Star shoe became more of a symbol of general lifestyle and fun, versus sports. In 1971 Converse would unveil colored versions of the originally black and white shoes, as a means of orienting the shoe for spectators in sports games. However, this would instead become a form of young self-expression, and soon enough, int he 80s and the 90s, the Converse became associated with the culture we see it associated with today. One of individualism, grunge, and metalheads.
The new crowd that purchased Converse All Stars were more of an anti-consumerist culture. They were tied to Converse due to the low-prices.
The All Star has managed to uphold its famous style due to the new “raw” and “authentic” style of the people buying it. The upheld style of the rubber base with the heel patch is considered practically timeless. “I think it’s remarkable that somebody can continue to wear a basic design and not look like you’re dressing up in your great-great-grandfather’s clothes,” says Semmelhack
