Here’s something I bet you didn’t know: the Converse All-Star is over 90 years old.
Weird, huh?
The All-Star was created by Converse in 1917 in an attempt to corner the basketball shoe market. Unfortunately, the shoes weren’t particularly popular in their first few years on the market. In 1921, Chuck Taylor saw to that.
Chuck Taylor was an enterprising young basketball player who saw potential in the All-Star. Within a year of Taylor’s involvement of the shoe, Taylor’s suggestions – fabricating the shoe differently for greater flexibility and support, and providing a patch to protect the ankle – were incorporated into the shoe.
By 1923, Chuck Taylor’s name was on the patch, as the shoe became the Chuck Taylor All-Stars.
Since then, the All-Star has become the highest selling shoe in history: by the end of the 21st Century, over 750 million pairs have been sold. All-Stars now come in a wide variety of flavours: leather, hemp, canvas, suede, vinyl – and every combination of colours known to man. Some of them even have Batman on the canas.
But while basketball can be attributed to the conception and initial popularity of the All-Star, musicians are the ones responsible for bringing the Chuck Taylor into pop culture legend.
Perhaps the most well known of all Chuck wearing musicians was Kurt Cobain, legendary frontman of grunge band Nirvana. For the entire duration of his career, Cobain wore nothing but Chuck Taylors, and in doing so defined an entire generation’s clothing sense.
Millions of misplaced Generation X-ers donned flannelette shirts, acid wash jeans and Chuck Taylor Hi-Tops as they tried to emulate their heroes. And Kurt wasn’t the only Grunge idol to adopt the Chuck Taylor: musicians as well-regarded as Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and Zach De La Roscha from Rage Against the Machine both swore by the shoe.
While grunge may have dimmed in the last 10 years, the Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star remains as popular as ever. No longer a shoe that defined a musical movement, the All-Star has expanded to all walks of life, from fashion, music, the bohemian avant-garde, and anyone with a predilection for alternative fashion at an affordable price.
If it sounds like I’m selling you on the Chuck, it’s because I am. Everyone, from tiny tot to senior citizen, should wear the All-Star at least once in his or her life.
It’ll make the world a better place.
