When my two boys have free time, they want to go to the mall. No, they aren't shop-a-holics (购物狂). They want to go to gaze at sneakers.
These aren't the sneakers you find in Foot Locker. They are limited editions-usually Nikes - that range in price from $250-$900 or more. There's the Chunky Dunkys, a collaboration between Nike and ice cream maker Ben and Jerry's. And the Space Jam Jordans. And dozens of other pairs of shoes, all of which they know by name and all of which are very, very expensive.
That made me wonder: How did this sneaker culture develop? After all, when I was a kid, I wanted Jordan brand shoes too. But they cost $100 and I would wear them until they fell apart. Now, my boys long for shoes that cost ten times that and if they got them, they would never even think of scuffing them up by wearing them.
It all started during the Industrial Revolution, when the very wealthy began to find they had leisure time on their hands, Elizabeth Semmelhack, who runs the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, told me.
"These 'nouveau riche (暴发户)' industrialists wanted to show that they had arrived. And so, the ancient game of tennis was revived. " explained Semmelhack, "But the problem with lawn tennis - one, the lawns of lawn tennis are extremely expensive, so they didn't want people to run around in leather shoes. And two, when you play on lawn, you can get your feet wet. So rubber soled shoes, the sneaker, was invented as something that the wealthy could wear as they pursued these wealthy pleasures. "Besides, rubber was, at the time, quite expensive, so having shoes with rubber soles was seen as a status symbol.
But for most of us, sneakers were something you wore--not something you collected. With the development of internet, older versions of shoes could be purchased and collected. And sneaker companies, Nike especially, leaned into the trend.
