1987 Nike Air Max 1

by John Gotty

Tinker Hatfield damn near lost his job at Nike because of the Air Max 1. Imagine one of the greatest athletic footwear designers of all time hitting the unemployment line over a model that changed the look of sneakers and the Swoosh’s fortunes in one fell swoop. What sounds improbable today almost occurred in the mid-’80s as Hatfield carved a tiny window into the soles of running shoes to birth the Air Max 1.

Nike’s Air technology wasn’t new. It was developed by former NASA engineer Frank Rudy, and the company began using it for support in running shoes as early as the Air Tailwind in 1978. Running enthusiasts loved it, even if they didn’t know exactly what it was. Up to that point, the tiny bubble units were hidden inside polyurethane soles. Hatfield knew the Air technology could offer more if it could be seen as well as felt.

Nike occupied a much different space compared to the pole position it sits in today. Dwindling sales and strong competition from other footwear brands pushed the company to look for solutions that would turn things around. As Hatfield recalled to Sneaker Freaker, former executive Rob Strasser told him, “You guys better do something, because this company is going down!” Hatfield took the directive and set out to create one of his most radical designs to date.

Hatfield is known as someone who looks outside of shoes for inspiration. Random items—sports cars, gym bags, or buildings—informed his designs, which was a drastically different approach at the time. A trip to Centre Pompidou in Paris provided Hatfield with the idea to show people there really was Air in Nike shoes—that it wasn’t just a marketing gimmick. The building gained notoriety for its “inside-out” design, with a facade showing its stair-cases and hallways. This ultimately inspired Hatfield’s decision to remove a portion of the midsole foam to reveal the cushioning system of the Air Max 1. “I came back from that trip and I was immersed in working on some new products for Nike, essentially the entire Air Pack,” Hatfield told Complex in 2008. “As I was working on the running shoe, which was going to have a bigger Air bag, and I thought, ‘This bag is getting so big, it’s getting closer and closer to the edge of the midsole on both sides,’ I said, ‘Why don’t we just cut a big hole in the midsole and let the bag kind of be exposed?’ In many ways, it almost eliminates the need to talk about it, because now you can see it. The Centre Pompidou was clearly an instigator for me, or an inspiration.”

He shared the initial sketches with fellow designer Mark Parker, who later rose to the position of company CEO, and the two hunkered down alongside a few others in a workspace away from the company’s main campus. Not everyone supported the idea of a special group being allowed to work in isolation on what appeared to be a bunch of wild ideas that wouldn’t amount to anything substantial. Others resisted the idea of exposing the Air unit, calling the move too risky. They imagined tons of defective shoes being returned once the Air units popped, either from using the shoes naturally or because of curious customers who deflated the bubbles themselves.

There was enough concern at Nike that an internal push arose to give the special group pink slips. But Strasser and Peter Moore, another well-respected designer for the company, shielded Hatfield and Parker from anyone looking to derail their creative process. While others sought to get them fired, Hatfield and his co-workers kept moving right along toward refining the initial idea to make Air bigger, better, and visible.

Exposing the Air unit wasn’t the only radical change coming with the new model. The bright red material wrapped around the shoes served as another eye-catching element of the Air Max 1. Leading with a bold color choice went against the conservative wishes of the Nike sales team and retailers, who subscribed to the notion that more neutral colors like white, gray, and navy sold better in stores. But an incremental change would only lead to a small growth in sales, which the company couldn’t afford. In essence, Nike bet big on Hatfield.

Despite the mounting number of naysayers, Hatfield knew the shoe would be a hit as soon as he had the final version in hand from the factory. He and Parker could hardly contain their excitement on the flight home from Asia after weeks spent finalizing the product. “I remember sitting on a plane with Mark and we didn’t want anyone else to see it, because we were fresh out of the factory,” he told Sneaker Freaker. “I’d look at it and he’d look at it and we’ll look at each other and go, ‘Man, this is wild!’ I remember both of us pretty much thinking the same thing: ‘This is crazy, but this is going to work, and people are going to go nuts!’ Sure enough, it just exploded.”

The Nike Air Max 1 finally released on March 26, 1987. Despite the detractors, the nylon mesh and synthetic suede mix of the sneaker resonated the most with buyers. “People were looking for something different,” Hatfield said in an article published on Nike.com about the consumer climate at the time. Runners took to the model naturally. What no one could have predicted was how the sporty model transcended its intended market. An influx of non-athletes—entertainers, city dwellers, weekend warriors, rappers, teens, and others—bought the shoe thanks to a new wave of marketing genius. The Air Max 1 connected with a swath of people like no running shoe before it.

The advertising campaigns associated with the model, created by agency Wieden+Kennedy, gave buyers a fresh perspective on Nike products. The company’s first television commercial came out in 1987 and featured the shoe, along with superstar athletes like Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson, and John McEnroe, with the Beatles’ “Revolution” providing the soundtrack. The spot connected the worlds of music and sports, forming a union that remains as strong as ever today. The print ads drew attention to the newly exposed Air unit by illuminating it and using taglines like “A revolution in motion.”

Suddenly, shoes weren’t just objects made of rubber and leather whose sole purpose was protecting the feet. They took on a level of personality and importance. They morphed into status symbols that accorded cool to their wearers. Along the way, Nike emerged as the designated purveyor of that cool.

The Air Max 1 holds a high rank in the sneaker world decades after its first launch. The model has been released in countless colors and material mixes, and a variety of forms. Visible Air remains an essential part of Nike footwear across multiple categories and sports. Those once-tiny bubbles have grown in size, shape, and color over the past thirty-plus years. The technology helped spawn countless running models under the Air Max umbrella—the Air Max 90, Air Max 95, and more—each with its own identity, but always with Air as a key element.

Hatfield’s gone on to attach his name to too many other silhouettes to count, many of them constructed with the same design ethos he tapped into for the Air Max 1. “Generally something that’s actually a little more progressive, and well designed, is either loved or hated,” Hatfield explained to Complex in 2008. “There’s no middle ground. I look for that kind of design result. People will either love it or hate it. If they’re kind of in the middle, I think that means you didn’t do too much. That means you just sort of maintained some status quo. That’s simply not my job; that’s not what I care to do. I don’t want to be a status quo designer that skates by with the lowest-common-denominator work.”

What started as an experiment in design and cushioning morphed into a career-defining creation for Hatfield and turned Nike’s business around. The Air Max 1 challenged the status quo in 1987 and changed the course of sneaker history forever in the process.

Honorable Mention
Nike Air Trainer 1

by Mike DeStefano

“You cannot be serious!” This phrase from John McEnroe’s infamous outburst at the 1981 Wimbledon tournament is what most casual tennis fans probably remember the ’80s star for. He was also a nine-time Grand Slam winner and one of the best players of his era, but his temper made him a household name. To others, particularly those into sneakers, McEnroe is known for his footwear—more specifically, the “Chlorophyll” Air Trainer 1.

Designed by Tinker Hatfield, the Air Trainer 1 made its retail debut in 1987. But the public’s first glimpse of the model took place unexpectedly a year earlier, when McEnroe laced it up on the tennis court. Nike had sent him a prototype, and he was told not to wear it in any tournaments just yet. He loved it so much that, true to his rebellious behavior on the court, he disregarded Nike’s wishes and wore it anyway. Once he laced the Air Trainers up, they were his go-to. McEnroe kept winning. It wasn’t official, but the Air Trainer 1 was essentially his signature shoe, years before Andre Agassi made a statement of his own on the court with his Air Tech Challenge series.

The Air Trainer 1 was billed as the first-ever cross-training shoe, a concept Hatfield drummed up after he noticed people in his local gym switching footwear when going from running to weight lifting. It was made to straddle the line between a runner and a basketball sneaker. As the name suggests, the Air Trainer 1 featured Air cushioning in the heel for comfort. The silhouette’s other standout design elements included a forefoot strap for additional lockdown and a lateral outrigger. Its signature black, white, and green “Chlorophyll” colorway was also influenced by Hatfield’s gym visits, as he recalled all of the equipment at his particular establishment being black and white with green text.

While McEnroe became notorious for wearing the model, two-sport athlete (baseball and football) Bo Jackson was the official face of Nike’s new cross-training division. The partnership birthed the iconic “Bo Knows” ad campaign, and would go on to introduce other popular silhouettes like the Air Trainer SC High and Air Trainer III.

Many more colorways of the Air Trainer 1 would release over the years, Nike’s SB division would adapt it for skateboarding in the 2000s, and Hiroshi Fujiwara’s Fragment Design even dropped a pack in 2015. But, to collectors, no person means as much to the sneaker as McEnroe, and no colorway beats the original.