by Marc Eckō
On the surface, the Air Jordan, Michael Jordan’s inaugural signature model, was a commercial vehicle for fans to connect to the talent whose name the sneaker bore. But the 1985 release wasn’t a land-mark thanks only to Jordan’s play, Nike’s design, or the colors it wore. It changed an entire industry because, unlike any shoe that preceded it, it proposed sport as culture, with Jordan as the symbol of this convergence. The silhouette quickly moved beyond basketball, immortalizing the player and creating a new, wildly lucrative lane for companies and athletes alike.
In the thirty-five years that followed, brands would repeat this formula hundreds of times, often to great success. But something else happened: the players who attached their names to iconic sneakers became icons themselves, figures whose personalities could shape multinational companies from the boardroom down. Jordan—and Charles Barkley, and Allen Iverson, and dozens more—rose to a level that had once been off limits to athletes.
At the same time, for people like me, sneakers offered a gateway to a career in design. And for streetwear designers who collaborated with brands like Nike and Adidas on high-profile releases, they became a path to mainstream legitimacy, a Trojan horse that carried creators like Virgil Abloh from an overlooked corner of the exclusionary fashion industry to runways at Paris Fashion Week.
What began with Jordan wearing a pair of sneakers culminated in a moment of economic and social justice. It’s a power shift we have never seen in any industry—and something we may not witness again.