How crazy were Jordan shoes in the 80s?

[Devil Plisken…CMS]

In 2001 you could go on East Bay and get The same Navy & Black 1s that go for a rack now for 79.99

 

[Whips-n-Chains]

In 2001 you could go on East Bay and get The same Navy & Black 1s that go for a rack now for 79.99

man I remember in HS or jr high when a new East bay catalogue would circulate around the classroom or lunch table...drop what you’re doing and go page by page thru it

 

[Saysumthinfunnymike]

I remember when the first pair of Jumpmans cams out. nikkas was like . But when we saw team jordans it was



This era Jordan’s = The knockoff/cornerstore Jordans from back in the 2000s. Same quality.. like you said seen the real/feel the real ones from 80/90s to know the different. That real leather

The quality on the concords is good. Better quality than a lot of the 1's releases

 

[Airfeezy]

The other thing about the $120 price tag is that other sneakers weren’t even close in price so spending that much on one pair seemed like a lot because in most cases you could get two out of sneakers for the cost of one pair of Jordan’s and people didn’t spend money on sneakers the way they do now

 

[Saysumthinfunnymike]

The other thing about the $120 price tag is that other sneakers weren’t even close in price so spending that much on one pair seemed like a lot because in most cases you could get two out of sneakers for the cost of one pair of Jordan’s and people didn’t spend money on sneakers the way they do now

Where is this coming from? There were Nikes more expensive than Jordans back then like the Pippens I posted

 

[NYC Rebel]

The 2 to 5 run was the greatest sneaker run ever imo.

Still was down with team never bought a pair.

 

[Whips-n-Chains]

I can attest to the quality drop off as well. I still have my 2001 Bred 1s (prolly my favorite all time shoe) and I remember around ~2013/2014 when bred 1s re-released and they looked and felt like plastic...the red color is much more dull.

Ppl were looking at my 2001s like the buttery leather, I think the swoosh is suede too, the red is more vibrant...

 

[desjardins]

I feel like WAY less people had them back then. Rare enough that it was something to actually see someone rocking them. I think that's why ppl were getting killed over them. Maybe the equivalent today is a dude just randomly walking into the spot with some $800 YSL or Alexander McQueen sneakers on
I don't remember Jordans getting "common" until the 11's but maybe I was around herbs and it's some city where everybody had all of them thru out the 80s and early 90s

 

[The_Sheff]

Like other people said Jordan releases were different then because it was a matter of them being expensive rather than exclusive. If you wanted a pair you could just stroll into Foot Locker and get them. The thing was some people would wait after the initial release to get the next color drop, at least that's how it was back in school because folks parents weren't buying multiple pairs of them for kids. Then you would be the only kid with that color. In terms of hotness, growing up the Deion joints with the mesh were possibly the hottest shoe I can remember.

My mom wasn't with that though. I would get whatever Flight Nike joints they had.

 

[desjardins]

. And people weren't going nuts when any old color dropped back then like they do now. Hypebeasting done changed shyt drastically.

I remember when they couldn't give certain colorways away
The khaki 16s come to mind and to a lesser extent the purple ones

 

[The War Report]

The quality of the OGs are superior to the retros. Nike realized they still make bank selling you lower quality retros. I blame you bytch ass hype beasts and ho ass resellers.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Where is this coming from? There were Nikes more expensive than Jordans back then like the Pippens I posted

Pippens didn't come out til 1997
We talking late 80s, early 90s
Jordan 1-8 timeframe
Only shoe that was more expensive were the OG Pumps that David Robinson and Woody wore in White Men Can’t Jump
I think those were $175

 

[manyfaces]

Where is this coming from? There were Nikes more expensive than Jordans back then like the Pippens I posted

This is definitely true, especially in late 90s, early 00s, but in the late 80s and early 90s they were like the most expensive "it" shoe on the market. There were still shoes that cost more, but they didn't have the status or style.

 

[LezJepzin]

They were always between 125-150 (after tax) until the 2000s . The Blue Foamposites (Penny's) that dropped in the summer of '96 were the only bball shoes that were priced more back then.

I had a friend who's pops traveled to Chicago for work and breh would have the newest J's weeks before they dropped . Didn't hurt that his Birthday was a week before either.


You had to call Eastbay in advance of the release date in order to secure a pair . By the catalog came out, only the kids sizes were available.

 

[Listen]

Did thread starter just read this piece?

Air Jordan III: The Shocking Story of the Greatest Shoe Jordan Never Wanted - Mental Floss - Pocket

Something strange was in the air at the Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. It wasn’t just that deadlines loomed—that was typical. A shareholders meeting was just around the corner, which never brightened the mood, but that wasn’t it, either. Tinker Hatfield Jr., a 35-year-old sneaker designer, couldn’t quite put his finger on it. His boss, Nike’s creative director and lead shoe designer, Peter Moore, typically blasted music in his office while he sketched new ideas for shoes. But this summer morning in 1987, the music wasn’t playing.

A few weeks prior, Rob Strasser, Nike’s vice president, suddenly handed in his resignation. Nobody had seen it coming. Strasser was an industry veteran who’d spent nearly two decades as Phil Knight’s marketing guru. He’d become a local legend, “the man who saved Nike.” In three years, he’d turned the company’s fortunes around by signing Michael Jordan to the most high-profile and successful athlete endorsement deal in history. Soon, Jordan’s contract would be coming up for renegotiation. Wherever Strasser was about to go, he seemed poised to take Jordan with him.

Moore, who’d designed the first two iterations of the Air Jordan, was clearly frustrated. Suddenly, he called Hatfield into his office. Sketches for a new shoe were scattered around the desk. Handing Hatfield a thin sheet of tracing paper, Moore said, “You do it. Design Michael Jordan’s next basketball shoe.” A week later, Moore followed Strasser’s lead and walked out the door, leaving behind a thin file filled with those same sketches. The deadline to present the new Air Jordan was a few weeks away, and the company’s fate seemed tethered to the deal.

Hatfield had never even worked on an Air Jordan, let alone designed one. In fact, he was new to the field: He’d barely worked on sneakers for two years. But now, with Nike reeling from the loss of its design and marketing leadership and with its relationship with Jordan on the line, Tinker had a lot riding on this one shoe.

***

In high school, Hatfield had been a standout track athlete. He was part of Oregon’s robust amateur-sports culture (near the center of which was his father, a legendary track coach). He attended the University of Oregon on a track-and-field scholarship and held the school’s pole-vaulting record for a while, but his teammate, Steve Prefontaine—who would go on to become one of the most celebrated track stars in history—got most of the attention. That was fine by Hatfield. He’d chosen Oregon because the school offered a bachelor’s degree in architecture—his true passion.

Four years after graduation, Hatfield was floundering at a corporate architecture job. Then his former track coach, Bill Bowerman, called. The company Bowerman had helped start, Nike, was beginning to flourish and it needed some help designing marketing materials. In 1980, Bowerman brought Hatfield in to work on an internal marketing manual. A year later, the position had bloomed into a full-time role. Hatfield worked on showrooms, offices, retail-space concepts: the kinds of things that ultimately mattered much less than the way everything else there was designed.

Then, in 1985, Rob Strasser asked Hatfield to compete in a company-wide design contest. The challenge was to design a shoe you could wear as easily on the track as you could fashionably on the street—such a crossover didn’t exist. Nike would never do anything with it, probably. It was a lark, a theoretical, an exercise to get Nike’s shoe designers thinking bigger.

Hatfield took it seriously. He stayed up all night, drawing a colorful upper with a low-profile midsole and a visible airbag in the shoe itself. Hatfield was inspired by Paris’s Centre Georges Pompidou—a building turned inside out—and its designers, the bad-boy architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, whom he counted as personal heroes. In his sketch, he positioned the shoes not on a runner but next to a European motor scooter.

This was a renegade move at a company whose mission was mainly to service runners’ needs. The more conservative minds at Nike saw this as a sign that Hatfield didn’t understand the brand’s mission. Some of his colleagues thought he should be fired. Hatfield didn’t care. He knew the company made purely utilitarian shoes, but he just wasn’t interested in designing purely utilitarian shoes. “When I came in,” he remembered later, “I had stories to tell.”

Moore was amused by his moxie and wowed by his design: It won the contest. Nobody at the top was entirely sure what to make of Hatfield, but they knew that he shouldn’t be designing marketing materials anymore. Just like that, he’d become a shoe designer. He didn’t know that, in just two years, he’d be faced with the biggest challenge of his career, nor did he realize just whom he’d need to win over.

Michael Jordan had come to Nike as a last resort. When he signed with the Chicago Bulls in 1984, he desperately wanted an Adidas endorsement. The German company had enough athletes on its books, however, and was reluctant to sign another. Even after Nike offered to tailor shoes to his liking, with his name on them—something no other company was doing at the time—and sign him to an eye-popping five-year, $500,000 contract (also unheard of at the time), Jordan wasn’t entirely sold.

Five years later, Jordan’s kicks were some of the most successful athlete-endorsed shoes ever. But as his contract neared its end, Jordan was looking for an out. Moore and Strasser, who’d signed him, were gone. The pair were hoping to lure Jordan to their upstart competitor, Sports Inc., where they wanted to give him his own shoe and apparel line. Adidas was beckoning too. At this point, Jordan could go wherever he wanted.

Nike had just one shot to salvage its deal with Michael Jordan: The Air Jordan III, which was now in Hatfield’s hands. Nike president Phil Knight didn’t know Hatfield well—and he didn’t necessarily trust him, since he’d worked for Moore. Jordan didn’t know Hatfield either. That was the first thing Hatfield had to change.

As soon as he could, Hatfield jumped on a plane to meet with Jordan. He needed to get a sense of who he was as a human, outside of basketball. Lately, Jordan had been buying suits, plus high-end leather shoes to go with them. Hatfield could see he had an eye for style and design that wasn’t entirely obvious to the public or reflected in the previous Air Jordans.

When Jordan talked about the styles and performance elements that he wanted in a shoe, Hatfield did something no other designer and executive had: He listened. A basic principle in architecture states that you can’t design a great house without knowing the people who will live in it. Hatfield applied this with Jordan. “I don’t think Michael had ever been worked with that way,” he told the Portland Tribune in 2005, “In fact, I don’t think anybody in the footwear business had done it that way.”

Both the Air Jordan and Air Jordan II were high-tops. Chatting with Hatfield, Jordan threw out an idea for a shoe that was less restrictive. Mid-tops existed, but they weren’t popular as far as basketball shoes went. They were seen as a compromise: less stable for the ankles than a high-top. But Jordan dreamed of a lighter shoe.

Hatfield kept hunting for inspiration wherever he could find it. Among Moore’s few prototype designs, Hatfield saw something exciting. The photo of Jordan that had been used to promote the last two shoes—jumping to dunk, legs split outward, ball in hand extended toward the basket—had been penciled out by Moore as a logo. The logo was buried in the files, never intended for use on apparel. Hatfield loved it and, without consulting anyone, he placed it on one of his first Jordan III designs.


Hatfield crafted a rough sample as quickly as he could. Another designer, Ron Dumas, took the sample and clarified Hatfield’s ideas. As Hatfield recalled: “No one slept for days.”