I was a Chuck Taylor devotee for many years, from high school to college to art school back to college, before finally giving them up at some point in my mid-20s. Today's Wall Street Journal has an article by Stephanie Kang on Nike's efforts to extend the brand beyond its traditional image to appeal to more fashionable tastes. (Nike acquired Converse in 2003.) Kang dutifully finds a grumpy old skooler who keeps it real by dumping on the new models: "What's happening is that Converse has now gotten greedy... That's why these are not as cool." Whatever. The guy probably thought Converse was selling out when they unveiled the fantastically fugly day-glo orange model that I loved so dearly back in 1987.
The upmarket, fashion-forward Chucks being rolled out now won't be a huge success, but they're not intended to be--their purpose is to generate publicity (like right now) around the fact that Chucks don't just come in the six basic flavors (black, navy, white, "optical" white, red and all-black), but in 471 varieties. And despite the grumbling of Kang's man in the street, I think that's wonderful. Let a thousand sneakers bloom. But our old skooler seems hopelessly entangled in the faux-utilitarian iconography that Chucks used to stand for. As Kang writes,
Even as Converse lost favor with pro players, it stumbled on a new fan base to court: Rockers Joey Ramone and Kurt Cobain were among the first slacker heroes to wear Chucks, influencing the footwear of millions of anticorporate rebels for years to come.
Let's ignore Kang's slightly slippery grasp on punk and pop-culture history and stipulate the point she's trying to make: Chucks used to be cheap gear for proles, or rich rockstars who wanted to maintain a prole image, or anyone who was "keepin' it real." So how will Nike navigate these challenging waters?
The suits are following the script--"It's such an iconic shoe that we're trying not to overextend it," coos Nike CEO Mark Parker--but that hardly seems necessary. If you're really an anticorporate rebel today, you're not buying Chucks--you're buying fair-trade, no-marketing sneaks made from organic hemp and recycled rubber. And if you think your Chucks are making a statement against the Man, you're delusional. Although perhaps the delusional market segment is a big concern for Nike, I don't know.
There's a larger story to be told here about 1) the end of authenticity--or, more accurately, the end of perceived, manufactured and marketed "authenticity," 2) the resulting decoupling of phony and ineffectual connections between the personal and the political, and 3) the individual's liberation from the herd--not just within the mainstream, but even (and especially) within smaller, often politicized sub-cultures. Whew--but that's a whole more than I have time for today.
