Obsessing over sports footwear used to be a niche activity. This was before your family asked about the latest Jordans and the long line-ups for them around Christmas. Before the resale industry became a billion-dollar behemoth driven by global frenzy. That all changed in the last decade, when sneaker collecting became mainstream.
The sneaker wars returned, with Adidas threatening Nike’s dominance. The shift in power owed largely to Kanye West, who went from checks to stripes as Adidas was hitting a serious stride. At the dawn of the decade, we were buying shoes from the past disguised as the future. By the end of it, we had really arrived in the future—NASA cushioning, automated manufacturing processes, and relentless robots snapping limited stock right out from under us.