Some trendy styles may ‘run’ out of stock, some may never leave the box once purchased, but sneakers do have miles of cultural traction. A major exhibition at London’s Design Museum, Sneakers Unboxed: Studio to Street, focuses on this ubiquitous shoe, highlighting the sneaker as a universal design object.

Although it began as a humble item of footwear, the sneaker has become a design icon in the 21st century, deserving of an exhibition focused entirely on the creativity behind the style. The London Design Museum has been chosen to host such an event, appropriately called Sneakers Unboxed: from studio to street, scheduled to run from this May through to late October.

In past years, the works of an artist could enhance a home, a museum or warrant a solo exhibition, and the most acclaimed were even considered as a sound investment. Today, there are some who see sneakers as an investment, although to many it may be difficult to see what pleasure one might get from looking at a shoe box in which a pair of sneakers is hidden. Though long a staple of art school cool, it is not often that sneakers themselves come under the scrutiny of the ‘white cube’ of museums.

Sneakers Unboxed spins a fresh web for the footwear stalwart, journeying from New York to Tokyo via California, Cape Town and the United Kingdom. Curated by Ligaya Salazar, an alum of design institutions including London College of Fashion’s Fashion Space Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), the show considers sneakers through two lenses: style and performance (although some eligible models appear under both categories, Ms Salazar tells WSA).

The show will certainly be a timely affair. Despite the negative effects of the pandemic on other areas of retail, the exhibition’s sponsor, StockX (a Detroit-based online sneakers, streetwear and collectibles marketplace, founded in 2015), recently announced that it is now worth $3.8 billion, up 35% ahead of an expected public listing later this year, according to the Wall Street Journal. During the exhibition, visitors will catch a glimpse of a data visualisation piece by StockX, which values the current sneaker resale market at more than $6 billion, plus significant highlights from the resale platform’s history, including the Jordan 1 Retro High Dior (2020’s “most valuable” sneaker release) and the all-time most traded pair of sneakers, the adidas Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Zebra.

Common goods

US investment bank and market research firm Cowen estimated last summer that the global sneaker resale market will reach $30 billion by 2030, with markets outside the United States consuming a significant portion of this pie, tipping the scales at around $19 billion. For the New York-headquartered firm, sneakers are an emerging asset class. Senior director for Europe at StockX, Derek Morrison, agrees that the footwear has the power to “unlock” economic opportunity for resellers.

Perhaps best underscoring sneaker’s pandemic-busting abilities, though, credit broker money.co.uk suggested earlier this year that shoppers’ moods — or “positive emotions” — actually increased by 64% following the purchase of sneakers (which, it is inferred, could either be brand-new or second-hand), based on survey data collected from 2,560 respondents over the period spanning February through March 2021. Mr Morrison concurs with this sentiment: “The love for sneakers transcends age, gender and location and, no matter your background, you probably have a connection, memory or story about your favourite pair."

Originally developed by Design Museum curator Shasti Lowton in 2019, Ms Salazar took the reins of Sneakers Unboxed in late 2020, following its postponement due to covid-19 and Ms Lowton taking maternity leave. Whereas Ms Lowton had secured much of the exhibition’s content after visiting the archives of many of the major brands and consulting with sneaker designers and collectors, Ms Salazar, who curated the Ecco-sponsored show, Fashion v Sport, at the V&A in London in 2008, largely shaped the exhibitions narrative and planned visitor programme. “I believe that you can’t tell the history of sneakers without telling the stories of the people who have popularised them beyond functional sportswear,” she tells us.

Form, fit and function

Whether coveted for their form, function or both, the culture built up around sneakers is arguably defined by the sneakerhead, a sneaker aficionado who passionately seeks out exclusivity and uniqueness in design, Ms Salazar explains. Long before limited editions or collaborations became the “norm”, she says, some sneakerheads would travel abroad to buy country-specific releases or go through old stock in a sports shop to find standout deadstock or vintage wares. Some still would customise pairs they already owned for fresh appeal.

The exhibition, therefore, begins with the concept of style, profiling the fashions of young people in 1970s New York before encountering early skateboarders in California and then moving on to the experimental ‘uniforms’ worn by those involved in the British football, casual, dancehall and grime subcultures. Its curated journey in sneaker culture next winds its way down to Cape Town, before charting the rise of early collaborations and limited editions in 1990s Tokyo — “when brands first started to realise their impact”, Ms Salazar notes — all the way up to the present, globalised market of international resale and largescale co-creation.

After style comes performance, according to Sneakers Unboxed. This technology-focused aspect of the exhibition’s design demands a pivot back to the origins of the sneaker, where eight key, interrelated elements of sneaker-making, such as traction, fit, cushioning and stability, are dissected and considered alongside contextual material including design sketches and material swatches. What is not to be missed, though, is the Design Museum’s take on the “most innovative sneakers throughout history”, as Ms Salazar puts it, nor its interrogation of what she describes as the most important strategic design concerns of our time: circularity and sustainability.

Adidas’ Futurecraft. Strung shoemaking robot by Kram/Weisshaar allows for on-the-spot knitting of full shoe uppers.

CREDIT: Adidas

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