Styles and Marketing
Several popular brands and styles of sneakers have emerged as collectors items in the sneakerhead subculture. Popular collections include Air Jordans, Nike Air Force Ones, Nike Dunks, Nike Skateboarding (SB), Nike Foamposites, and Nike Air Max. Shoes that have the most value are usually exclusive or limited editions. Also certain color schemes may be rarer relative to others in the same sneaker, inflating desirability and value. Recently, sneaker customs, or one-of-a-kind sneakers that have been hand-painted, have become popular as well.
Companies such as Nike and Reebok also have custom shops now where the user can choose from the color, custom lettering, and materials that they want, and they can be custom manufactured. Nike continues to use basketball stars to market new sneakers. In 2011 the Zoom Hyperdunk was introduced through Los Angeles Clippers sensation and 2010-2011 NBA Rookie of the Year Blake Griffin. Nike has also employed celebrities from outside of the sports world to design and market new shoe lines. One example is the Nike Air Yeezy, designed by rapper Kanye West. Skateboarding is since about 2005 a major player in the shoe collecting industry especially with Supra Skytop Muska I, II, and III.
Read more about this topic: Sneaker Collecting
Famous quotes containing the words styles and and/or styles:
“Can we love our children when they are homely, awkward, unkempt, flaunting the styles and friendships we don’t approve of, when they fail to be the best, the brightest, the most accomplished at school or even at home? Can we be there when their world has fallen apart and only we can restore their faith and confidence in life?”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)
“... it is use, and use alone, which leads one of us, tolerably trained to recognize any criterion of grace or any sense of the fitness of things, to tolerate ... the styles of dress to which we are more or less conforming every day of our lives. Fifty years hence they will seem to us as uncultivated as the nose-rings of the Hottentot seem today.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)